


Dutiful Misdeeds (HIATUS - It will get finished, promise.)

by PilotFlux



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Peter Parker, F/M, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, I hope you like sadness, Major Character Injury, Parker luck strikes again, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker is a Mess, Protective Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, it has a happy ending i promise, may parker being the best ever, this is a rough one folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24600745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilotFlux/pseuds/PilotFlux
Summary: Normally, May and Peter had date nights on Thursdays. He’d always make sure to take some time off patrol, and she’d get Thai takeout, and they’d sit in front of the TV watching soaps and gossiping and just living.This Thursday, they’re in the hospital.//When May is diagnosed with a benign tumor that threatens her life, with a surgery they can't afford being the only way out, Peter takes it upon himself to ensure they make it out of this mess together. So he collects debts, and gets paid well for it. Simple.Until it isn't.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Adrian Toomes, Peter Parker & Avengers Team, Tony Stark & Peter Parker
Comments: 51
Kudos: 158





	1. Better Than Being Dead

**Author's Note:**

> hellllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooo  
> After the absolute sufferfest that was my fic "The Stars Are Lonely", I had the idea for this- And lemme tell you, its a doozy.  
> Plenty of angst, suffering, and overall whump ahead. do proceed with caution.  
> (updates every week ish. sometimes i take longer to write chapters, sometimes not. also, anyone willing to beta will receive my infinite and undying praise :))

Normally, May and Peter had date nights on Thursdays. He’d always make sure to take some time off patrol, and she’d get Thai takeout, and they’d sit in front of the TV watching soaps and gossiping and just living.

This Thursday, they’re in the hospital.

The doctor’s scrubs are a faint teal and her name badge reads ‘DR. OWENS’ in big, blocky, sanitary letters. She sits on the examination stool with crossed legs and kind eyes when she tells them the news.

“It’s a tumor. Benign, but- It’s not good. Scans showed that it’s wedged underneath your renal artery, and is impeding blood flow into your kidneys. Your body isn’t filtering blood correctly- If we don’t remove it, you’ll have to stay on dialysis your entire life.”

Peter can feel her shaking through the parchment on the bench. May reaches for his hand and he grabs it, squeezing tight as she asks, “How much would it cost to remove?”

The doctor gives her a sympathetic look before checking the number. “For a surgery invasive as this, and stretched thin as we are… At least eighty thousand. Another twenty for the recovery period.”

Immediately he knows they can’t afford it. They barely manage to survive on what they have anyway- Scraping together _one hundred thousand dollars_ is such a remote impossibility that the first thing he starts doing is trying to think of other ways- He and Mr. Stark haven’t talked in nearly six months, not since Toomes’s trial. May lost her job in the paternity ward after passing out in the middle of a delivery, which meant no insurance. They could try and pay it off in the long term, but that would mean they would both be working near constantly, something she couldn’t handle after recovering from a major surgery and he couldn’t fit into his already overloaded schedule.

“I know this is… Hard. Very hard,” says Owens, “But we can start you on dialysis right away, May, and keep it in control until we have something figured out-“

Peter speaks up, giving the doctor a wide-eyed mix of desperation and fear. “How long do we have? Until it gets more dangerous, I mean.”

 _Until she could die_ lays unspoken in the air, like a stick of dynamite hanging from cobwebs.

Dr. Owens points the same sympathetic look at him, now, expression twisted in trying to dig up the right answer from the depths of her medical knowledge. “It depends on whether it continues to grow or not, and how soon we start dialysis, but about two or three months. Blood toxicity is a dangerous game to play, especially when we don’t know how heavily the artery is being restricted. We should take action as soon as possible.”

They sat in the car for twenty minutes after leaving, drowning in the type of silence that only happens when something really horrible is going on. She grips his hand again, and he squeezes it, ideas and scenarios and horrible, awful things shaking through his head like ball bearings down a lead pipe.

“Honey, are you okay?”

May’s tone cuts through the rattle, quiet but full of that concern and love she pulls off perfectly every time.

Peter gives her a forced smile, running his thumb over hers. “Yeah. Fine. Just thinking.”

She narrows her eyes. “I know that look in your eyes, Peter. That’s your ‘I’m gonna be a hero’ look. Please don’t tell me you’re planning to rob the Fed or something, because-“

“May, I think I could get us the money, okay? It wouldn’t really be _legal_ or _moral,_ but I could get it, and we could pay for the surgery and the recovery, I think. Maybe.”

A different look hits him this time, the ‘you’re being a self-sacrificing moron’ one. “You’re not breaking the law for me, Peter. I won’t let you.”

He stares down at his beaten-up Converse and keeps rubbing her hand. “I could do it, and I could get away with it. I just-“

“ _No._ That’s final.”

May leans over the center console and pulls Peter into an awkward hug, tucking his head into the hollow of her collarbone. He closes his eyes and breathes in her minty perfume, trying not to cry.

“You promise me you’re not going to go and do something stupid like start a pirating website, okay? We’ll get through this, kiddo. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

Peter snorts at the joke and keeps breathing, trying to calm down. He knows this isn’t like the time he had to work ten hours a day to replace the bumper he wrecked on one of their parking lot practice sessions, or when she worked double shifts at the hospital to send him to Space Camp in seventh grade. Those things were all manageable and a little smaller and no one was going to _die_ if things didn’t work out, but this is different. Now, if they don’t figure out how to make it work, then Peter will be alone. The last familial connection he had to the planet would be severed, and the Parker name would be left to him. And he _totally_ couldn’t handle the stress of that.

“Hey. You wanna get Thai?”

Peter nodded into her neck, pulling away and buckling himself in. He didn’t notice that there were tears in his eyes until he felt the wet splashes on his balled fists, and he wiped them away quickly, staring straight ahead. May kissed his forehead before putting their junky old station wagon into gear and pulling into traffic, trying hard to ignore the way her hands were still trembling on the steering wheel.

Ⴟ

They get curry and sticky rice pudding and eat it on the fire escape, Peter a little shocked (and irrationally offended, if he’s being honest,) that New York keeps on bustling on in the late Spring sun, May occasionally glancing at him with concern. He’s kind of just shoveling the food into his mouth at this point, not really eating, so the sound of plastic scraping against styrofoam startles him. He puts the empty container down and looks out at the fixedly declining glow on the horizon, knees tucked to his chest.

“You wanna talk, kiddo?”

She nudges his knee with her spoon, giving him Look #3, the ‘talk to me because I love you’ one.

Peter shrugs, playing with the frayed edge of his jeans. “You’re _dying,_ May. I don’t know what we can really talk about, y’know?”

May responds with a snort. “Pfft. You think anything can take me out, Peter? After all the shit we’ve had to go through?”

She pulls him into a side hug, rubbing his shoulders, and he takes the moment to breath in her perfume again, because a titanic weight settles on his chest when he thinks of forgetting that smell for good.

“This’ll suck, Pete. But we’ll find a way. We always do. It’s the Parker Way.”

They stay like that for the rest of the waning afternoon and into the night, only slipping back into the warmth of their apartment when the streetlights blink on and Queens begins to slip into it’s evening shudders, the gestalt of bustling city life burning down to embers.

Ⴟ

Part of living the Parker Way is living with the Parker Luck. That’s why the first dialysis appointment is on a Thursday.

It’s probably the strangest environment Peter’s ever been in. They’re surrounded by a ramshackle assembly of sixty-somethings that drift precariously between zonking out and scribbling down the answer to their crossword, cancer patients (because the hospital is so poorly funded that chemo and dialysis happens in the same room), and the other type of cancer patients that are super lively and badass. It still feels like he’s living in a dream, and even though it’s a perfect afternoon and Peter could be patrolling, which May has been prodding him to do for the past hour (of a four-hour treatment), he refuses to leave. After all, he’s currently kicking _total ass_ at Monopoly, and leaving a stack of cash big enough to fund his imaginary pet cemetery remake (he’s a fan, alright? Don’t judge,) would be criminal.

He also doesn’t want to leave May alone.

“Lord, who the hell taught you to play this good?” She whines, forking over another 500 after landing on Park Place, which is coated in houses and hotels because they don’t play by the normal rules, and settles back into her cushy seat.

Peter just grins manically and puts the phony bill atop the rest of his chaotic pile, moving his piece forward (a Darth Vader Lego minifigure, because they lost all the actual pieces a long, long time ago) and handing her the dice. “You know how anal Ben was about Monopoly. I learned from the unofficial Coney Island champion, May.”

She laughs in that angel’s hair way she usually does, sliding her own Lego figurine (a Frankensteinian amalgamation of Luke Skywalker’s torso, Harry Potter’s head, and Chewey’s legs) along the tiles. “I’ll concede that point. Still, you could take it easy on me. I’m just a sick, frail old woman, after all.”

“You’re not old, you’re _seasoned_. There’s a difference. Plus, I gotta keep you on your toes. Constant stress is good for you.”

May snorts, swiping a strand of hair from her eye. “Don’t I know it. Surprised I’ve got a tumor instead of a stomach ulcer.”

They banter back and forth like that for a while, trying to stave off the scent of chemical sanitization and overall unpleasant aura bombarding them constantly. After what seems like an eternity (and way too many wins for his ego), a nurse comes in and slowly pries the dialysis machine’s tendrils from May’s veins, and the scene is way too reminiscent of an Alien movie for Peter not to wince.

It’s still sunny when they leave, harsh glints bouncing off car windshields and sticky heat soaking into them like syrup into Saturday morning pancakes. When they finally make it to the car, she turns to him and squints, giving him Look #4, ‘I don’t want any special treatment from you’, which is usually only reserved for the weird guy at Prachya Thai that always gives them free food. “I know you think you’ve got to stick to me like a puppy, hun, but it’s a beautiful day out. You should be patrolling. Or at least posing for pictures, or something. Don’t want the Bugle thinking you’re dead.”

She must sense his hesitancy, because she narrows her eyes even further, pupils barely peeking out from cinched lids and gaze pointed enough to pierce concrete. “You’re only going to go if I make you, aren’t you?”

Peter sighs, shrugging. “I just don’t want to leave you alone, May. I already spend so much time at school and stuff, and with all this tumor business, I’m not sure if you should be-“

“Peter. Honey. I love you, but you’re a little neurotic sometimes. I will be _fine,_ ” She puts the car into gear and pulls onto the street, both hands on the steering wheel. “Plus, you’ll get springy and weird if you don’t go out. That’ll kill me even quicker.”

“ _Don’t_ joke about that, May, please.”

He drums a finger against his knee before relenting. “Fine. I’ll go. But I won’t stay out for long, okay? I wanna be home before dark. We can watch a movie or something.”

May agrees with a hum, eyes fixed on the road. Quietly, she’s smiling.

Ⴟ

Peter crawls through his window under the cover of pitch darkness, feeling a little guilty for not making his way home sooner. The rapidly approaching summer heat left him coated in sticky sweat, and he just drags himself through the shower like a half-dead sewer rat before shuffling into their living room.

He can see May’s haphazard bun while rounding the corner, and Ferris Bueller on the TV, paused mid-Rooney mauling, a cup of likely cold tea sitting on the coffee table. Peter shakes her shoulder gently, trying not to startle her too much.

She slumps over like a bag of water, thumping dully on the couch cushions.

Peter has his phone in his hand and is dialing 911 before he actually realizes he’s doing it, the operator’s voice tearing him out of the soundless, lifeless void his head is currently jammed in.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Uh- My, uh, my aunt- She’s passed out, um-“ Peter stammers, scrambling to her side to feel for a pulse. It’s there, soft, and too thread to comfort him, but it’s there. “She has a pulse. I need an ambulance.”

He gives her their address and sits cross-legged next to May, idly stroking her hair while his ears start to ring in an uncontrollable cacophony of silence. He’s confused- They did what Dr. Owens said, right? She got her blood squeezed through that god-awful crème-colored machine, sat there pretending everything was going to be okay for three hours while they were literally _surrounded_ by death, trying to drown out the grinding motors and sloshing of blood with jokes and banter. If they did what they were supposed to, why was May-

Peter nearly stuck to the ceiling when the EMT slammed her fist on the door, announcing the ambulance’s arrival. “Emergency services! Are both residents conscious and able to open this door?”

He padded over and undid the locks languidly, like he was swimming through syrup and mud, blinking at the woman and her partner as they barged straight into the kitchen before spotting May splayed on the couch, eyes closed and skin swapped to pallor from its normal soft olive, hair messy and sticking up all over the place from Peter’s ministrations. The pair’s paramedic, tall and lanky with soft hazel eyes and violently orange hair spiked in the way only the early 2000’s could teach, started the examination, his partner turning to Peter with a clipboard in hand.

“Hun, I’m gonna need to ask you some questions,” She said, standing to face him. He’d moved across the room without even realizing it, like he was magnetized to the scene in front of him and couldn’t escape the pull. He nodded and gave her his attention.

“Any past history of smoking, drug abuse, alcoholism?”

Peter shook his head, arms snaking around his torso and squeezing his ribs. “She- Has this tumor under her kidney. It’s messing with her blood flow. We went to dialysis earlier today.”

The EMT nodded and passes the information along to her colleague, who finishes clipping an oxygen monitor to May’s finger and stands. “It looks like she had a minor heart attack. Might’ve been stress on her heart from the treatment,” He grabs a gurney from where he laid it, settling it next to the couch. “We’re gonna take her to Presbyterian. Do you have anyone to call?”

Peter shakes his head, and the medics share a look of mild pity, the kind he’s used to getting from his whole ‘total orphan minus the aunt’ deal. They offer him a ride in the ambulance, and he takes it, because God knows that they’re going to be paying $12,000 for the ten-minute ride, and his ears ring the entire time. His head is swimming, like he’s concussed but aware of everything that’s happening around him, _painfully_ aware, and before he knows it Dr. Owens is crouched in front of him and grabbing his hand because he’s digging blunt fingernails into the trashy plastic seat in the hospital’s waiting room.

Idly, he wonders why the chairs in places where people are waiting to hear if their loved ones are dying are always so goddam uncomfortable.

“Peter, honey? Did you hear me?”

He snaps out of that train of thought, reality seeping back into his body. It’s nauseating. “N-No. Sorry. What?”

Owens gives him a sympathetic look, clasping his hand between both of hers. “Your aunt is okay. She had a cardiac arrythmia from the stress put on her heart by dialysis. We’ll all talk about what that means later, but for right now, she’s awake, and wants to see you.”

It takes Peter a few seconds to fully recalibrate, pulling his hand from hers and standing. She seems to understand his silence, and gently squeezes his shoulder before guiding them to the stairs and up a few floors, winding through hallways and doors and skimming past nurses pushing carts until they reach May’s room, and he still doesn’t even realize they moved at all until he’s there.

He should really stop doing that. He’s gonna walk straight into traffic on accident if it keeps happening.

Owens guides him to May’s bedside and leaves, promising to come back and talk later. Peter slips his knobby, rough hand underneath his aunt’s, feeling an odd sense of relief when he feels her soft skin and smells her minty perfume and just feels _her_ , all May-like and comforting. She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb, and Peter climbs into the bed next to her, burrowing into the crook of her neck like it’s the last available hibernation spot and he’ll die without her warmth and protection.

“Key, kiddo,” She says, pulling her hand free from where it’s pinned beneath Peter’s hip and winding it around his shoulders. Sorry for that scare.”

He shakes his head, curly hair tickling her nose. “S’ not your fault, May. You can’t control your heart.”

It’s like she can read his thoughts, because she ruffles his hair and frowns softly. “You can’t control it either, honey.”

At the tilt of his head, she snorts, gently pulling knots loose in his mop of a hairdo. “Don’t act like I can’t read your thoughts, Pete. I can feel guilt radiating off of you.”

Peter shakes out a tiny, miniscule, breathy laugh, pressing his face deeper into May’s neck. “Sorry. I just- Y’know. If I had been there, I could’ve done more.”

“Psh. From what, a _heart attack?_ Contrary to what your big brain might think up, hon, you can’t make my heart suddenly work better,” says May, pressing a finger to his lips when he opens to them to protest, shaking her head with a laugh. “I love you, kid, but sometimes I think you’ve gone even more coo-coo for Cocopuffs than I have.”

They both chuckle a little, and Peter almost starts to feel better when Owens returns with a somber face and crossed arms.

“Here’s the deal,” She begins, pulling over a rolling stool. “I scheduled you for four hours of treatment to clear out a buildup of junk in your blood from the few weeks before your diagnoses. I didn’t stop to consider that your heart might be struggling to maintain bloodflow-“ Peter narrows his eyes at that, a little peeved that the doctor in charge of May’s wellbeing made an _oopsie_ that could’ve killed her- “And the dialysis machine pumping newly refined blood back into your system was just too much for it to handle.”

May nods, face in a neutral, calculating sort of expression, the kind she put on while doing taxes or balancing checks. “Okay. What’s that mean?”

Owens fiddles with the collar of her scrubs. “We’ll have to reduce your treatments to about two hours and put you on blood thinners. Probably space the appointments out longer than I would like, but I want to play this pretty safe until a cardiologist can give your heart a better look.”

Peter’s looking at her from under May’s hair, now, and clears his throat, trying to get the lump out of it. “What’s- What does the timeline look like? Does spacing the treatments out more mean the surgery is going to have to happen sooner, or?”

“We’ll have to monitor her progress over the course of a few weeks to figure that out,” She replies, still fiddling with her scrubs. “Like I said, this is- Pretty dangerous territory. Until the surgery happens, May’s body is going to have to constantly battle to keep itself running, which won’t be easy. I’ll make sure to keep you guys updated, so it’s a little easier to manage. For now, I want you to stay overnight, so I can make sure there’s no other complications or weird rhythms with your heart. After that, you’re free to head home, and I’ll call you to schedule the next treatment then. Sound good?”

Peter almost snorts, because _no, it doesn’t sound good, because May is dying,_ but his aunt nods and Owens leaves, giving them a moment to try and figure out what the hell to do.

He speaks first, pulling back from her neck. “May, we- Can’t afford that surgery. I know we can’t, and you know, too. Not without any income. We’ll be stuck in debt for the rest of our lives if we try.”

“I know, I know,” Her eyebrows knit together in that way Ben’s used to, and he wonders if he got it from her or vice versa, because he’s thrown through a loop at how contemplative and serious she looks. May is normally- Breezy. Light, and happy, and quirky. She’s not boring or predictable, and that’s what Peter loves more than anything, She’s like a comfort blanket that turns into a scattered collection of confetti swirling in one of those air chamber things you see at Chuck E. Cheese. Perfectly caring when she knows you need it but absolutely riotous every other moment of the day. “Whatever happens, Peter, you _cannot_ do something stupid for me, okay? Don’t go quitting school and getting four jobs or something.”

Peter does snort this time, because he knows she knows that he would do that in a second if it would make even remotely enough money to save her life. “Don’t worry. No noble acts from me. Nosirry.”

They both laugh at that.

May pulls him close with one arm, her other limited by an IV drip and wires, and presses his head to hers. “I love you, kid, you know that? More than anything.”

He nods, feeling tiny and weightless, wrapping arms around her shoulders and squeezing. “I love you too, May. So much.”

He whispers it again and again when she falls asleep, curling deeper into her side, and cries, because he’s afraid of never being able to say it to her again.

Ⴟ

Something Peter has always loved about Queens is its makeshift feel. Like it’s stitched together from all the people dwelling in it, making up some messy but beautiful patchwork quilt of crumbling, graffiti-covered brick, family-owned food carts, and homey bodegas, personifying the American melting pot. However, an unfortunate byproduct of such cultural alloying is the inevitability of underfunding, gentrification, and poverty.

That’s the only reason he can think of for Queen’s Detention Facility keeping around the 1990s-style prisoner booths- One of which he’s sat at, parallel to Adrian Toomes, leant close to the thin barrier of acrylic that stands between him and the man who nearly shattered his spinal column into several hundred tiny, irreparable pieces.

The Vulture has fixed him with a gaze accurate to his namesake, like he’s just waiting until the inevitable collapse to strike. Peter returns his own, and tries to keep from breaking it, because if there’s one thing he doesn’t want to embody right now, it’s fear. He can’t afford it.

“So. My aunt is dying.”

Toomes starts, his scrutinizing expression slipping to confusion. “Ah. And you’re here… Why? For a chat? Biscuits and tea, Pedro?”

Peter lets his lips slip into a grimace, digging blunt fingernails into the cement beneath his hands. “I need money, to- Pay for her surgery. To save her live,” He tries to keep the mild tremor out of his voice, but is failing, and it makes him sound far more childlike than he’s aiming for. “She had a heart attack a few days ago. That alone is going to make us live on Kraft easy-mac and ramen for the next few months, we just,” Peter sighs, and tries to dig his look into Toomes, vying for some kind of fairness, some modicum of decency hidden beneath layers of cruel indifference. “We can’t afford it. I’ll do whatever it takes. But I need a lot of money, and I need it fast.”

The man shifts in his seat before leaning forward, resting his chin on a balled fist. “You know, Petey, I didn’t peg you as the type to betray a rigid moral backbone. What’s the jam, huh? You trying to dig up the rest of my contacts, sort out the last of my messes?”

“No. I don’t- Mr. Stark and Damage Control deals with that, I think. Hunting down the weapons,” Says Peter, fighting every nerve in his body so he doesn’t lean back, away from the plexiglass, trying to look strong and ready. He knows he’s failing, but it’s an effort, nonetheless. “I know there’s more stuff out there, more guys with the gear you’re selling. I had to knock a guy with anti-grav gloves off the side of the Chase Bank on 31st the other day. I doubt you want them out there, right?”

Toomes looks like he’s considering, now, thinking about the potential. “I only got transferred here because of your testimony, Parker. If I do what you’re asking, I could get punted out for good, which means I’d be even further from my home, and my family. I don’t like the risk.”

Peter shifts closer, now, nose nearly pressed on the barrier. “I understand, I do, but we need this- My aunt _needs_ this money, man. She’s gonna die without it, and soon. I’ll round up the weapons, I’ll store them wherever, I,” He rubs his eyes, suddenly feeling so damn _tired,_ so weighed down and languid, everything beginning to seep into his bones like resin. “Just. Please. Anything. I’ll do anything.”

“How much?”

They lock eyes for a moment, and it almost feels like Toomes understands some of it, the desperation and anger. “How much what?” Peter says dumbly, dropping his gaze to the cubicle’s cement sill.

“Time. How much time does your aunt have?”

He shrugs, unsure. “The doctors don’t know. Depending on how well the dialysis works, a month, maybe a little more. Her heart is under a lot of stress, though. It’s volatile.”

Toomes nods, sniffing as he thinks. “I’ll pay you give grand for every guy you round up with my stuff. You store it in my warehouse, I’ll get someone to check it’s there and authentic. Only cash, wherever you want me to get it dropped.”

Peter stiffens a bit, because he honestly wasn’t expecting him to actually say _yes._ “Wow, uh- How many do you think there are?”

A snort. “Plenty. Stark hasn’t been very… Involved, with Damage Control. They’re doing a shitty job at getting the last of my product collected, and there’s still people circulating it. Probably a quarter of a million’s worth in New York state, maybe a third of that just here in the burrows.”

A quarter of a million. That’s financial solvency. More money that Peter’s seen in his whole _life_ , or been offered the chance of getting, at least. He can feel the money signs taking place of his pupils and the visceral greed speeding into his bloodstream, and he stamps it out, because this is for _May._ Anything more than what they need would go somewhere that needed it.

If he’s going to break the law, he might as well try to be altruistic about it.

“I’ll take the deal. Just send me the warehouse info and I’ll have the first guy there by tomorrow, at the latest,” Peter pushes a piece of paper into the little sharing drawer thing, and Toomes takes it, tucking the slip into his uniform. “That’s the number for my phone. Just leave the money wherever the warehouse is, and I’ll collect it after the dropoff.”

They share one last look before he stands, phone still in hand. “And thank you. I- I didn’t know where else to go.”

The Vulture gives him a nod, somewhere between acknowledgement and understanding. Peter leaves the prison feeling like he’s going to vomit, but also like he finally, _finally_ has a say in something. He doesn’t know how long it’s going to take before he’ll be able to accept what he’s doing; It’s wrong, and he knows it, but its May. His May, loving and kind and the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. This plan has to work.

He has to save her.


	2. No Place Like Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapera los dos!  
> next update might take a while, fair warning. for now, though, enjoy!

Peter slides open his bedroom window and crawls through in a flurry of limbs, tossing his backpack into a corner with far more force than necessary and pulling his mask off in one smooth motion. He’d used a combo of trainhopping and webslinging for his journey to the prison, and was soaked in sweat from both physical exertion and stress. Karen had begun sorting through police files for potential targets (He lied and said he was working a new case, and still feels the pinpricks of lingering guilt), and had yet to come up with anything of much use.

In the living room, May is crunching on muesli and berries- Something Peter never seen her come close to even _looking at,_ but it’s healthier than Lucky Charms, so he pours himself a bowl in solidarity and plops down next to her on the couch, knees tucked to his chest and spoon halfway into his mouth when she asks him how patrol went.

“Good,” He says, swallowing the first bite and going for another. “S’ not super busy. Saved a few cats.”

He hates lying to May. Especially about the cats. Even with a wicked allergy, they’re in her Top 5 Best Animals Alive list, an achievement comparable to receiving a Nobel prize, though more prestigious. She has a folder in the phone with videos of all the ones he’s rescued from trees and garbage cans.

“That’s good. You smell like sewer piss, by the way. A shower might save my heart some stress.”

Peter wrinkles his nose, looking over at her as he finishes chewing a strawberry. “What’s the difference between regular piss and sewer-“ He sighs, setting his bowl down. “Actually, don’t want to know. Wanna watch Cake Boss after I’m done?”

As if reading his mind, May turns on the TV, show already queued up. “You got it, hun. Now go, shoo, before you make this couch smell even worse than it already does.”

She’s right. Their couch has this weird combination scent of mothballs, spilled beer, cigarette smoke and something unnervingly sweet that have united forces to kick the ass of anyone unprepared for it’s sinus-curdling stench.

Peter likes his showers ice cold (It’s a habit he picked up after having a warehouse dropped on his head, and his new fear of lukewarm water dripping anywhere on him should probably be addressed sooner or later, but he’d rather file it away for the time being,) and just long enough to scrub the sweat and dirt from his hair, but not long enough to wrinkle his skin. He leaves the bathroom smelling like apples and cinnamon- May loves artisan soap for some reason, but it usually makes him smell pretty nice, so he doesn’t complain- and tosses on the first sweatshirt he sees in his bedroom, combining it with a pair of unflattering basketball shorts that come well above his kneecaps. From the other room, Buddy Valastro waxes poetic about some towering beauty of a wedding cake they’d barely managed to scrape together before the client’s deadline, and May cleans out their bowls in the kitchen sink, rattling pipes that haven’t been replaced since the fifties spraying way too much water from the tap.

Rounding the corner, Peter makes a beeline for the pantry, intending to make amends with his stomach for not eating breakfast that morning.

Instead of Dortios and Welches, he finds stacks of whole-wheat crackers, cans of beans, brown rice, and a whole host of things that make his blood sugar crestfallen but his curiosity piqued. “Uh, May- Why did the fun police raid our pantry?”

She peaks around the corner, eyebrows raised as she eats a pear. “Huh? Oh, right,” May ducks away, producing a sheet of stationary with _Queen’s Presbyterian Hospital_ printed at the top, a mile-long list of foods below it. “Dr. Owens gave me this list at the checkup, said I should start eating healthier. Should make it easier for my kidneys to- Y’know, work.”

Peter makes a noise somewhere between _aaah_ and a scream, because _damn,_ the Doritos were almost gone, and the crumbs are the best part. “Cool, cool. So is all the normal human food locked away in a vault somewhere, or?”

“Aw, sweetheart, sorry. I shoulda gotten you some stuff,” May offers him a gigantic carrot that must’ve been raised on steroids because it’s at least two feet long and wide as his fist at the top. “Lots of veggies, though. It’ll probably be good for you, too, considering you basically entirely subsist off of 7-11 and whatever the average soccer mom keeps loaded into her minivan.”

Carrots are his least favorite vegetable, but his stomach is really starting to get pissed, so Peter takes it, snapping off a chunk the sized of his forearm and nibbling on it with narrowed eyes. “Mfo, Ms. Dmr Omwnes snaid errythin’ s’ gom?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. And yeah, sorta,” They meander to the couch and plop down, analyzing the elaborate rose made from frosting that tops a cake the size of their kitchen table. “She said we just gotta take it slow, not put too much pressure on my heart. Eat better, obviously. All that snazzy stuff.”

If he’s being honest, Peter can’t recall the last time they had such a quantity of healthy food in the house at the same time. Usually, they order out, but May hardly eats anyways, aside from dinner. He knows the only reason she’s made this dramatic switch is because she’s trying her hardest to assure him that everything will be fine, regardless of whether or not he believes it’s true. It makes his heart wilt.

“Hey, May.”

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“Love you.”

She snakes an arm around his shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “I love you too, Peter.”

Ⴟ

Peter sits across from Ned at Sully Jr.’s, poking at a slice of too-greasy pizza with pinched brows.

“So what’s up, dude? You just kinda, y’know, called me out of nowhere and said we should meet up, which I’m totally cool with, but honestly it’s a bit freaky-“

“May’s dying.”

Ned blinks, his own dripping slice falling from his hand to the paper plate below. “Oh- Oh, my God, Peter. I’m so sorry. What is it?”

“Tumor under her kidney, impeding the renal artery. Her heart is struggling, her kidneys are straining, it’s,” Peter rips a pepperoni off and tosses it at the wall; He can’t tell if it’s in frustration or anger. “She’s trying to manage, you know? But it’s hard. She’s changing her diet up and stuff, but it won’t be enough, Ned.”

His best friend looks crestfallen, trying to find the right words but failing. “Is there anything you can do? Like, surgery has to be an option, right? If it’s not malignant?”

Peter nods, but its sullen with a steady sort of dread, like Atlas took a day off and he’s the one holding up the world today. “Yeah. But it’s gonna be over a hundred grand. We just can’t afford it, not when she doesn’t have a job.”

Neither of them are strangers to poverty. Ned was always better off, but even then, his parents still struggled to pay for all his camps and programs. Peter wasn’t well off with May even when Ben was around; Neither of their jobs paid well, and it’s not like his parents had much of a will drafted up for what little they had left over, either.

“Couldn’t you ask Mr. Stark? I mean, you had the-“ Ned switches into a whisper, leaning across the table. “Spider-man thing. Wouldn’t he help you in like, a heartbeat? He was gonna make you an Avenger, after all.”

“I haven’t talked to him in ages, not since the trial with Toomes,” replies Peter, staring at the pool of grease gathered in the center of his pizza. “Plus, we were never really close, y’know? Like, we _interacted_ a few times, and that was really cool, but he never invited me over for charades or whatever. Half of the times we talked he was scolding me for something. And I get it, it’s not his fault, with the whole Rogues situation, but. Still.”

“You feel like it’s your responsibility to help May.”

Peter nods, finally looking Ned in the eye. Greif and determination are having a fistfight in his pupils, trying to figure out who’s going to win. He loves May almost as much as Peter does- She’s like, a second mom to him. “You’re doing something to help, aren’t you? Something, like, not super legal?”

Another nod. “Trying to. Dunno if it’ll be enough.”

“Let me help.”

There’s a fire in his friend’s eyes, now, unrestrained and resolute in its purpose. “I can be your guy in the chair, help you with whatever job you’re doing-“

“No, Ned. God, no,” Peter says, shaking his head so hard it might snap at the neck and go rolling off. “I’m not dragging you into this. It’s my responsibility, and if something happens, you can’t be connected to it. I don’t know what I’d do if I got you arrested or- or _worse_ , working with me. I have Karen, she can help with the smaller stuff. I’ll handle the rest.”

Ned visibly sags, head dropping a few inches lower. “I want to do something, man. She means a lot to me, too.”

“I know. Just, like, maybe something else? Drop by when you can, and we can all hang out?” Peter’s picking at a loose thread on his already shredded jeans absentmindedly, trying to rectify the look of crushed hope in best friend’s eyes. “We’re both gonna need support. I think having someone around would help her, even if it’s just stupid stuff, like playing board games or whatever.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, that sounds good.”

They both stand, food abandoned on a table, and spend a half second in awkward silence before Ned pulls him into a hug, arms wrapped tight around his torso. “I’m so sorry.”

Peter’s voice is quiet and miniscule when he replies, almost drowned out by the white noise around them. “Yeah. Me too.”

He promises to call later and make plans to hang out, then leaves, headed toward the bus stop. Peter starts picking through the crowds, walking in a haze, before his phone buzzes.

Before he even pulls it out he knows it’s the API he jacked Karen into, a bright red alert screaming on the display: TARGET LOCATED.

Peter ducks into an alley, trying and failing to squash the guilt worming it’s way into his head as he changes into the suit and follows his AI’s directions towards the first mark.

Ⴟ

“You’re sure this is him, Karen?”

Perched on a ledge, Peter peers down at a man as he loads a variety of duffels and suitcases into the trunk of a black sedan, looking seedy both in stature and demeanor. The car is sleek and brand new, an Audi- According to his AI, straight from the dealership.

“Yes, Peter. Mr. Dulan’s financial records indicate a massive surge in income since the arrest of Toomes, and numerous individuals in his contact list would appear to have transferred sums of ten thousand dollars or more to his account via remote wire transfer.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “He just had the people he’s selling to on his primary cell? No burner?”

Karen makes a sound of affirmation, and says, “Indeed. The only other names present in his call list were ‘Ma’ and ‘Jacob’. Neither have made a call in several weeks.”

He stays silent for a moment as Dulan goes to grab the last set of bags, contemplating. Something in the back of his head tells him the lack of personal contacts is less of a safety measure and more of a window into his personal life; Assuming ‘Ma’ actually meant his mother, then maybe this guy is doing the same brand of work Peter is, trying to help her out. Further than that, who’s Jacob? A friend? Just some random number?

Turns out there’s not much time for speculation, because soon he’s running from the house with a colossal weapon in his hands, glowing blue and pulsating like a pissed-off slug. Before Peter can even think, a ball of lightning jumps from the barrel and onto the tree he’d been hiding in, turning it into a pile of smoking ash.

Okay, _so_ not cool.

The sedan has already peeled off down the street by the time Peter can peel himself off the sidewalk, wincing at the burn on his side. He’d managed to avoid the worst of it, but the smell of charred skin in his nose is still pungent. He balters several steps forward and slings himself to the roof of a building, sloppily jumping across crushed gravel and cool concrete in chase of his target.

He can make out the screech of tires coming to a rapid stop to his left, so he turns there, using his body as a pendulum when he spots Dulan, trying to unwedge his weapon from the back seat where it’d been tossed. Just as he drops out of his fall and aims his feet at the man’s chest, Dulan fires, and Peter barely manages to catch a lamppost as the ball of white-hot plasma arcs into a building, charring the brownstone’s exterior and lighting the interior ablaze, roaring flames slipping from it’s windows like lions heads.

The streets erupt into panic, and Peter thinks quickly, sticking his opponent to the concrete with a stream of webbing and tossing an EMP to the car’s hood to prevent his escape. He sprints full tilt at the house, legs carrying his momentum into a jump straight through the second-floor window, landing with a _thunk_ as smoke begins filling his nostrils.

“Hello? Is anyone-“ He devolves into a coughing fit before Karen activates the air filters in his mask, sucking in a lungful of fresh oxygen before clearing the room he’s in and moving on. “Anyone here? If you can hear me, yell! It’s Spider-Man!”

The projectile was horrifyingly effective. Before he’s even in the hallways he can feel the heat seeping into the building, coating every room in a carpet of fire and smoke. He thinks the second floor is clear, but is relying entirely on his super-hearing to check for any survivors, with thermals made ineffectual by the current summer camp-bonfire-gone-wrong state of the place.

Peter has to stick to the stairway walls as he slinks down, afraid of the stairs caving in while he’s walking down them. The first floor is basically the same deal as the second; Fire and smoke and ash everywhere, consuming every inch of his vision, starting to wear on the suit’s fire-resistant threading. Faintly, he can hear the sound of struggling and groan of pain, and rushes through a hallway, stopping at a room whose door fell straight off the hinges.

He can hear the ceiling joists turning to the equivalent of a ten-year termite infestation above his head, threatening to cave in any instant. Hastily, he drops to the floor, trying to peer under the smoke in search of a trapped leg or pinned torso. Instead, he spots an ear-length blonde bob and long, slender frame yank a piece of miscellaneous metal fragmentation out of its leg and literally _vault_ from a window, leaving a trail of blood the whole way.

Karen’s warnings are beginning to blare in his ear, now, and Peter barely avoids getting smashed by a chunk of flaming wood as the whole ceiling in front of him caves in completely, leaving the roof open to daylight.

“Peter, the building is in imminent danger of total collapse. You must exit _immediately._ The suit has taken extensive heat damage and will likely be irreparable without lab-grade equipment if you continue to expose yourself to the flames.”

It’s subconscious. Before he knows it, the sky is fully clear above him, no still-burning embers or smoke dancing in his vision. Peter scrambles to the edge of the building he’d landed on, peering over the edge to the street below. To his udder surprise, Dulan is still there, webbed to the pavement. Fire engines and police sirens wail in the distance, approaching rapidly.

He jumps off the roof and lands in a roll, jogging over to his target and delivering him a swift kick to the head, rendering him unconscious. Peter feels a little guilty, but is still working through the massive reserve of adrenaline in his bloodstream, so can’t find much space to care.

Dulan slumps easily in the car’s passenger side, and he jumps in the driver’s side, deactivating his EMP charge and turning on the car’s motors, peeling from the street in a showy display of skidding rubber and falling ash.

Ⴟ

Peter can’t go into the warehouse.

He’s sitting, parked in front of it, fingers tapping on the steering wheel in a nervous staccato, like he’s a strung-out junkie who needs another hit. He figures that it would probably look strange to anyone walking past; A bleeding Spider-Man, with an unconscious guy covered in webs as his passenger, eyeing the entrance to some run-down trashbin spot full of rusty filing cabinets and rotting pallets like it’s about to swallow him whole.

For all intents and purposes, it might as well be.

Four deep breaths, a slap of the center console’s shiny, black, pho-leather covering, and he opens the door.

It’s a perfectly normal afternoon in late May. That’s the thing that really bugs him. Peter’s always had anxiety- It’s kind of home territory, what with his one-point-five-time orphan status. He’s gotten better with it, but it’s always tiny, insignificant, moronic things that get him. Like the sound of dripping water, or creaking walls, or small spaces. Sometimes, its nothing at all.

His heart is beating faster, he can feel it. His lungs are taking in more air, and it’s odd because it feels like he’s suffocating instead of breathing, and his head is starting to hurt from trying to untwist the vines wrapping around his skull. His back is aching like there’s rebar stuck in it, like a building is pressing on him all over and it’s just constant, unrelenting pressure, as though he’d been squashed into a waffle press at some cheap motel and the world is _so small_ in his eyes, narrowed to a single beam of light-

Dulan groans from the passenger seat, head lolling to one side, and Peter jumps at least five feet straight up. Right. Dangerous criminal to hand over.

_Or paycheck to collect_ , whispers his conscience. He doesn’t know what to make of that, yet.

Peter takes a deep breath, pivots on one foot, and opens the passenger side door. His charge slumps out and groans some more, probably nursing one hell of a concussion from the kick he’d taken earlier.

_How innocent_ are _you, really?_

“Hey, man. I’m sorry about this. You did try to blow me up, though, and you, like, turned a brownstone into a _black_ stone, so. You ready to face the music?”

Another groan.

Peter puts his hands on his hips like a soccer mom and tries to determine what to do. There’s still the biting, wicked sensation in the back of his head that this is _so, so_ wrong, that this guy isn’t totally innocent but handing him off to a group of people that will either mortally wound or kill him isn’t a very _heroic,_ _justice-centric_ move.

For a moment he wishes that someone would just walk out of the warehouse already, some giant, scary-looking bald guy with an assault rifle, and demand he hand over the weapons. Then he wouldn’t have to decide.

Then this wouldn’t be his fault.

Predictably, no one comes.

Swallowing back the bile in his throat, Peter drops into a crouch and scoops Dulan into an armpit body drag before swapping to the more elegant over-the-shoulder, then moves to open the trunk. It’s full of duffels and suitcases and even a Pokémon backpack, stuffed in haphazardly. He checks them all, and sure enough, there’s a stash of Chitauri tech and weapons large enough to supply a small army.

Peter picks most of them up in one hand, slinging the rest over his shoulder. The warehouse doors seem like they’re a thousand feet tall, like they tower above him, and it takes Peter a moment before his courage is suitably gathered and he can turn the doorknob, shouldering into the place as his senses are screaming to do the opposite.

Sat at one end of a rusting table is a mousy looking guy with a corduroy jacket slung atop a pair of machinist overalls, head covered by a beanie. He stands as Peter enters, hands tucked into pockets, and introduces himself as Mason.

“Toomes- Well, our company went under when- Y’know, everything happened. All our guys who did the dirty work are either in prison or somewhere in Mexico or Europe or whatever, so I’m here to take their place,” He explains, gesturing to an open shipping container. “You can drop the stuff in there.”

Peter huffs with the exertion of setting it all down, spinning on a heel and jerking a thumb at the man entwined in webs and groaning on the floor. “Is uh- What’re you gonna do to him? Cuz, I know he’s selling your stuff or whatever, and I know I’m not really an innocent party here, but killing him seems drastic-“

Mason’s eyes grow wide, and he holds up his palms, head shaking. “No, no no. I don’t know what we’re gonna do with him, but- We won’t just kill him. Them. If there’s more you find, I mean.”

“He told you about why I’m doing this, didn’t he?”

A nod. “Then you should know, this won’t be the last guy I’m grabbing. I need that money. Bad.”

Peter tries to be vague with the details, because God knows what Toomes could do. He’s really just relying on blind trust from a murderous madman not to kill him and the last family he’s got left, which when he thinks about it is probably a really, really dumb idea, but his options are limited.

“The boss said to give you this,” Mason says, pulling a manila envelope from his jacket pocket. It’s fat at the bottom, the outlines of honest-to-god stacks of hundreds obvious against the cardstock. Peter takes it, letting his payment hang loosely from one hand like a lunchbox. “My number’s in there. Whenever you’re about to make a drop, call me. I’ll be here with your money.”

The bills are weirdly heavy. He didn’t expect that. “Alright. Uh. Thanks for this.”

Mason’s eyes are sympathetic, and he nods, turning toward the shipping container and moving to check the bags.

Peter takes that as the cue to leave, so he sets off, rolling the envelope up and keeping it tucked firmly into his armpit on the long journey home.

Ⴟ

He buys a safe on the way home.

It’s tiny, like _pathetically_ small, but Walmart was the only place open so late, and his options were limited. The cashier had given him the ‘you better not be a school shooter’ look as she scanned the box, and he tried for the most innocent smile he could muster, but his brain wasn’t feeling super up to the task of pulling his facial muscles into order, so it probably looked like he was having a minor stroke.

The envelope had three things- A card with Mason’s phone number, a note from Toomes, and _ten thousand dollars in fucking cash_ , which he still hasn’t gotten over. _‘Call it advanced payment’_ , the scrawl had read, all in sharp, jagged angles, like it was written either by a serial killer or a tetanus patient. Peter punched the number into his newly purchased burner phone and tossed the card, trying to ignore the aftershocks that still rattled through his body like a plucked nerve.

May’s banging around in the kitchen when he clambers through the window, hair matted by sweat and bones aching. Despite the fact that his burns had already healed, and he’d gone through much worse on patrols, every inch of him felt like it’d be tossed into a Jaws-style pit of dirty heroin needles- Filthy, sore, and generally not too jazzed about being around.

Peter stashes the safe underneath his bed, box already discarded. The thing could probably be cracked if you hit it too hard or something, but he figured it’s probably the idea of the thing that matters most. For now, he tucks the envelope right alongside it, intending to set the lock code later.

His backpack hits the floor with a _thud_ and he claws viscously at his battered Converse like they’re bear traps, tossing the poor shoes into his closet with absurd force. Next goes his hoodie, then his shirt, then his pants, and before long he’s gulping down a glass of water in a pair of sweats and some trashy sweater next to his aunt as she chops up veggies and puts them in a salad bowl.

“Lord, kid, I swear you come back smelling worse and worse after every patrol,” She complains, nearly stabbing his bicep with the knife before going for a jab with her elbow instead. “I need to, like, have a hose ready to spray you down when you stumble in here. Jesus.”

He finishes the glass with a sigh, gingerly placing it next to hers on the countertop. “Sorry, May. Long day.”

Her expression softens instantly in that way it does, going from snarky, sharp glances to tender, soft looks like a switch is flipped. He doesn’t know how she does it. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry. You wanna talk about it?”

Peter considers. An edited version of the story, at least, without the ‘I’m going very illegal things to help pay for your surgery instead of starting a GoFundMe or something like most people’ part. He decides against that option, and just shakes his head. “Nah, not really. I’m gonna shower. That pile of nature’s vomit gonna be done when I’m back?”

He points to the bowl, piled with cucumbers and bell peppers and probably a thousand other veggies that he hasn’t consumed in at least a decade. May snorts and waves him off, going back to chopping.

They eat at the table, which is a rare occurrence for dinners. He picks away at the salad, feeling more bone tired than he has is ages, like every inch of his skin is hooked with fishing weights and it’s dragging him down so unbearably slow that he might die of old age before the feeling of gravity chipping away at him pisses off.

“You’re _sure_ you don’t wanna talk about it, honey? It looks like you’re writing a Shakespearean tragedy up there.”

May’s giving him that look again, so full of love and compassion and this unwavering promise that everything will be okay.

“I just,” Peter starts, fork resting on the side of his plate. “This sucks, y’know? I met up with Ned for lunch and told him, and I just- I don’t really know what to say, or how to react, or anything. It’s like the world is covered in syrup and I’m moving in slow motion.”

She slides her hand over his, rubbing slow circles with her thumb. “That’s a fair reaction to have, Peter. I mean, Jesus, look at me,” May gestures at herself and the kitchen, full of fruits and veggies and all these things they’re not used to but are suddenly barging in like they belong. “I haven’t eaten this healthy since I was in my twenties. Everything right now is- Changing, and I know it’s hard on you, God I do, but I’m doing everything I can to make it easier.”

“But you _shouldn’t_ ,” He says, trying to convey the desperation that’s slinking through his head like a monster, dragging steel knuckles around like the maze inside his head can be cracked open by brute force. “You’re the one dying, May, not me. I love you so, so much, but I want to help _you_ feel better. I’d feel- God, I want to feel like I’m doing something. It feels like all the hope is dripping out of me like I’m a leaky faucet.”

May leans over and pulls him into a tight, close hug, the kind where all of her fingers dig into the corded muscle of his back like she’s an anchor and he’s the sea floor and they’ll never be separated. “Honey, helping you helps me, you know that. You make everything in my life easier, even if you’re a royal pain in my ass sometimes. You’re my _kid_ , and you give me hope that this’ll work out just by being around. You’re like crack without the rapid weight loss or rotting teeth.”

Peter sniffs, tears starting to stream down his face and onto her cardigan. “Why did this happen, May? What’d we do to deserve it?”

She’s silent for a few seconds, and when she does speak, the tears sound close for her, too. “I dunno, kiddo. But y’know what?”

“Hmm?”

“’Long as we stick together, everything is gonna be fine. Y’know why?”

“Cuz’ you love me?”

May nods against his neck, and her hair smells like some flower he can’t pin down, but it’s just so _her_ and for a minute, just the two of them, it feels like she might be right.

“I love you too, Aunt May.”

Ю

Tony’s woken from his power nap on the lab couch by a silent alarm, FRIDAY speaking softly as he readjusts. “Unidentified craft just landed on the northwest quinjet dock, Boss.”

He blinks up at the security feed, grainy nightvision making details blend together into one image. “Fri, switch on the floodlights and scan for an ID.”

The picture is flooded with light just as the rear bay opens, and Tony is flooded with dread the minute they hit the ground, because only one quinjet has those burn marks and bullet holes.

“Boss-“

“FRIDAY, suit. Now.”

“Boss, _wait._ ”

“NOW, FRI!”

His heart is beating out of his chest and he can’t close his eyes, because Steve fucking Rogers is walking out of that quinjet, and-

Natasha Romanov hangs limply from his arms in a bridal carry, her entire torso wrapped in a compression bandage, left leg hanging as a mess of charred and shredded flesh.

“FRIDAY, prep the Medbay, and get Cho down here,” He chokes out, hands braced against a lab table. “ _Now.”_

“On it, Boss.”


	3. Broken Hearts And Bulletholes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This chapter is a bit rushed and short because I've got some stuff to catch up on. New chapter will be out in a week or so. Thanks for reading!

“What the hell happened?”

Tony is sat across from Steve fucking Rogers, and it’s only through years of business meetings and negotiations that he’s able to stop himself from jumping across the table and throttling the man’s neck.

Cap looks down at his mug, hands wrapped tightly around it, and sighs. “There was an explosion. We’ve been living at a safehouse in Brooklyn for the past few months-“ At Tony’s scowl, Steve frowns. “We couldn’t run internationally forever. The best spot was here, home. It meant we could avoid detection and be available if another Loki-level event happened.”

He stamps down the cocktail of rage and fear brewing in his stomach, opting for another sip of coffee to cover it further. “Okay, whatever. Why was Natasha the only one injured? She’s a super-spy, Rogers. A little explosion shouldn’t be able to stop her.”

“It wasn’t just any explosion, Tony,” Steve shifts in his seat, crossing his arms and leaning back. “It was like- A ball of electricity, concentrated stuff.”

“Like lightning? Ionized plasma?”

A nod. “It was the size of a soccer ball. Only caught a glimpse before I had to get all the others out.”

They sit in silence for a few moments, stewing with the thought. Some of his later Marks were capable of free-flying plasma projectiles, but it was close range and only controllable via an electromagnetic field- Not to mention its barely the size of a baseball. “Did you catch what fired it? Vehicle mounted? It could’ve been a hit.”

“Not possible. We bought the property anonymously and barely ever leave. And I don’t know how it was fired- All I saw was the projectile heading right for our building. I heard a vehicle leaving a minute or two after Nat got out, but it was chaos, Tony. Hard to parse environment from hostile force.”

Another lull. Idly, Tony checks his watch for any updates from Cho, and finds nothing. Natasha had extensive second and third degree burns across her torso, plus massive lacerations on her right calf. Last time he checked, it was likely she’d lose the leg.

“I didn’t want to bother you here, Tony. I- We had no other choice.”

Steve is staring down at his mug, lids barely open.

“I’m grateful for your perpetual guilt complex, Rogers, but I really don’t give a shit.”

Tony is trying to crack through the ice covering his skull. It feels like he’s drowning in the Arctic sea, even though the compound’s kitchen is perpetually at seventy degrees. “This isn’t- Something we move on from, you understand? Mr. Barnes, I could make an exception for. He was brainwashed. It made sense, no matter how much I don’t want to acknowledge it.

“But you? You had no influence from a covert Nazi terrorist group. You didn’t have codewords or implanted memories or a liquified brain. You _knew_ the truth and instead of telling me and talking it out, you turned the Avengers into a fucking boyband.”

Fissures above his head now, in the shape of broken glass over a glowing heart. “You betrayed me and everything I thought you stood for, Rogers. Your being here doesn’t just piss me off, it _infuriates_ me, like nothing ever has before. That’s what you absolutely fail to understand. There is no forgiveness here, _Cap._ At best you’ll get tolerance.”

He’s standing, now, hands stuck into pockets and eyes hidden behind a refurbished pair of blue-lenses Raybands. His voice is cold and his body is, too, like a metal cage is slowly turning his blood to sludge and his heart to ice. “Ms. Romanoff will stay for her full recovery. You and the other Rogues can have your rooms back until I decide I’m sick of having to look over my shoulder for you.”

Tony leaves the kitchen and trudges through snow and sludge to his lab, where the familiar scent of metal and grease fills his senses, calms him down, makes his world bearable again.

“Boss?”

FRIDAY’s voice is concerned, the way it usually is when she’s witnessed something and isn’t capable of addressing him about it. He doesn’t bother with a reply; Just slides into a chair and puts his head down on the lab table, trying to ignore the thrumming migraine in the back of his skull as he drifts into a restless sleep.

Ю

“B6.”

May sighs and puts her aircraft carrier to the side, taking another sip of water. “I know I joke about it all the time, but _seriously_ Peter, this is just ridiculous.”

They’re at the hospital for her second week of dialysis, grinding through the hour and a half of treatment by playing Battleship and reading _Vogue_ magazines swiped from the waiting room. Peter is two rounds in with zero sunk ships, and it’s really starting to get on her nerves.

“It’s just probability. Ten-by-ten grid, all the ships take up different amounts of space-“

She swats at him, a scowl painted on her lips to hide a smile. “Yeah, yeah, nerd stuff. God, you’re a total dweeb, kiddo.”

Peter smiles and puts a white peg in the middle of the sea when she calls for G2, steepling his fingers like a chess prodigy with an astronomically large ego. “Nerds rule the world, May. You can’t escape us.”

The hospital is painfully balmy. As the east coast slips into summertime, heat is seeping into every inch of New York, sticky and inescapable. Especially at their apartment; It’s like living in an easy bake oven someone left in the Everglades. May is wearing jorts and a spaghetti top, which is a massive deviance from her normal attire, and Peter has to exercise notable self-restraint so he doesn’t rip off his t-shirt in a fit of heatstroke-driven rage.

The game ends with a final sunken patrol boat, and May pouts, swiping her pieces back into the game’s box. “Alright, I surrender. You’re no fun to play against.”

Peter frowns, plucking his unharmed ships from the grid and putting them aside. “Maybe it’s just cuz you suck,” He mutters, folding up the board.

She hears his swipe and flicks his nose in retaliation, leaning back in her chair and snatching up a magazine from the floor. “Better watch your mouth, or the next battleship you’ll be sinking is in a homeless shelter.”

His face contorts with confusion as he closes the box and puts it aside. “I know that was supposed to be a threat, but it really didn’t make much sense.”

“Shush.”

Suddenly, Peter’s phone starts buzzing like mad in his pocket. Another target.

He pulls it out just to check, and finds his suspicions confirmed, standing abruptly. “May, this is something important. Are you gonna be okay checking out alone?”

She frowns, but nods, head tilted to the side with worry. “Yeah. Be careful, okay?’

Guilt gnaws at his chest with iron teeth, but he nods, grabbing his backpack and slinging it over a shoulder. “I’ll meet you at home, okay? Be safe! And say hi to Ms. Dr. Owens for me, please!”

\---

The man- Dominic Foaly- is short, stout, and balding, dressed in khakis and a white buttonup, some backwards facsimile of formalwear. He paces behind an unmarked van, periodically checking his smartphone; It’s unsettlingly similar to that first weapons deal Peter had busted nearly a year ago, minus the embarrassing ringtone fiasco and subsequent terminal velocity skydive.

He's running one final check on his webshooters as a red truck pulls up and parks next to the van, carrying one passenger- The buyer. If Peter’s lucky, then he could snatch both men in one go, turn them in for a double bounty.

_People are money now?_ Asks his conscience, like some deep, smoldering part of him still trying to keep the illusion that he’s a good person intact.

“You got what I asked for?”

Peter is shaken from his wallowing by a deep, unwavering voice stood a few feet in front of Foaly. He refocuses and spots his target nodding, opening the van’s doors to reveal crates upon crates of weapons.

“What’re you gonna do with all this shit, anyway? There’s enough firepower here to wipe out a city.”

The buyer narrows his eyes, stood defensively with crossed arms and a scowl. “You’re getting paid a quarter million not to ask questions like that. Give me the keys.”

“Wire transfer, right? In twelve hours?”

Foaly eyes the him with distrust, keys clenched in one hand.

“Yes. Now, keys.”

Three things happen at once:

One, Foaly tosses his buyer the keys,

Two, the man pulls a gun from his waistband,

Three, Peter’s abdomen is sprouting blood like a fountain, staining the loam beneath his feet crimson.

Foaly lies behind him, cowering on the ground, and the guy who shot him is priming for another round, expression stuck somewhere between pissed off, confused, and constipated.

His pistol is on the ground a tenth second later, he’s pulling away, and Peter is staunching the relentless flow of blood spewing from both sides of his torso with webbing, head spinning. He’s lucky it’s a through-and-through; It should heal by tomorrow morning, once he gets May to put stiches in.

He tries to ignore the feeling of dread that bubbles like acid in his stomach at stressing her out, but it settles there regardless.

“Holy-fucking-hell. You’re Spider-Man.”

Peter sighs, doing a dramatically slow turn. “Yeah. Hey, do me a favor?”

His target nods slowly, squinting, before webs bind his limbs together and seal his mouth. He writhes uselessly for a few moments before giving up, groaning audibly like being detailed for selling weapons of mass destruction is just _such a bothersome affair._

Peter loads him into the van, sliding into the drivers seat with a wince. It’s not the first time he’s been shot, and its also not the worst injury- At the same time, holes in his body aren’t usually appreciated, even if enhanced healing makes them more of a chore than mortally threatening. He texts Mason and lets him know there’s a new delivery on the way, pulling out into midday traffic and settling in. The fact that he’s driving strikes him as a little funny, considering that lifting busses is like, a minorly daunting workout to him, but circumstance is debilitating.

“Where are you taking me?”

The voice nearly makes him swerve, but he corrects, checking the rearview mirror. His target had managed to cut the webbing on his lips with the sharp end of a nail, and is looking very displeased.

“Dropping you off, man. You can’t be selling weapons like this.”

His eyes narrow. “Dropping me off _where?_ Damage Control is in Washington, so unless we’re going on a cross-state roadtrip-“

Peter thwips a new web over his mouth, making sure its double-layered. He sighs a moment later, eyes fixed on an intersection as he turns. “I’m brining this stuff back to the first people who made it. ‘Oh, Mr. Spider-Man, why are you doing that?’” He chatters, speaking from the corner of his lips. “That’s none of your business. But if you must know, there is some- Stuff going on, and I need extra cash. They won’t kill you, probably just whack you with a wooden spoon and let you off with a warning.”

In some part of his head, Peter’s conscience is still thrumming, pulsing like an open circuit. It tells him that there is no true way to justify what he’s doing; They might be criminals, but so are Toomes and Mason. Helping them is the same as giving a mugger someone’s wallet, or stealing precious jewels alongside thieves, or hiding a body. There’s nothing righteous about this.

At the same time, his heart feels like it’s on the verge of collapse when he thinks of life without May. Even if he’s not a good person, she makes up for all of it. There’s nothing that woman wouldn’t do to help people. Peter’s pretty sure the only reason he hasn’t broken down yet is because she’s still here, still living and breathing back at their apartment, doing chores and cutting up vegetables because a salad is the only thing she can’t burn; Being amazing, and bright, and dorky, and caring. Helping criminals is bad, but- Even if it’s selfish, he can’t live without her. He won’t survive.

Makes takes Foaly and his shipment in exchange for an envelope of cash. It’s lighter than before, but it’s money, nonetheless. The swing back to the apartment leaves Peter drained, probably thanks to the gaping bullet wound that’s no doubt been worsened by his continued activity.

He slides through the window with more difficulty than usual, feeling painfully lightheaded. He pulls off the mask and yells for May, who comes running into his room with a suture kit in hand. “God, kiddo, you look _messed up,_ ” She says, pushing sweaty curls from his forehead and frowning. “Suit off, c’mon. You know the drill.”

Peter nods and slaps his chest, eyes widening at the crimson staining his side. The webs must’ve busted.

May winces in sympathetic pain, guiding him to the bed and examining the wound as he lays down. The wound hasn’t closed up yet, by some miracle, so the stiches come easy. She’s well-practiced with the needle, now, after more than two dozen holes patched.

They sit in silence for a few minutes after she wraps his torso in a compression bandage and gives him a bowl of some kind of broth, the seven split, swirling images of his room coalescing into a focused picture of one concerned May, leaning back in his desk chair.

“What took you so long to get here, Peter? You could’ve died from blood loss. Literally no more than ten minutes from death.”

Her voice is strained, and she’s clearly trying to hold back tears, blinking with squinted lids. “I get that you have enhanced healing, and I’m grateful for that, but don’t risk it, okay? Please. Just-“

A tear streaks down May’s face, and he’s sitting up in an instant, arms wrapped around her as she cries. “Don’t leave me, kiddo.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry,” He says, and it’s true, because his heart is getting stabbed by a thousand tiny shards of glass and his conscience is back, thrumming stronger now, beating to the rhythm of _do better do better._

There’s a part of Peter that yearns to tell her why his sheets are covered in a crusted layer of blood, but he can’t do it. There’s only seventy-five thousand left to go, and the pain he feels is nothing compared to the hollow absence he’d have to suffer without her. So Peter just keeps his arms locked around May’s waist, letting her silent sobs wet his neck, and pretends he’ll be able to forget the way every inch of him feels like it’s been dipped in molten lead.

Ю

Natasha hates being drugged.

It’s not like she isn’t resistant to it, but it’s still unpleasant. It makes her blood flow thickly and her senses sluggish, impedes her normal hyperaware perception. However, the morphine drip gets a silent thanks when she manages to pry an eye open and sees her thickly bandaged leg and, worse, feels what must be six broken ribs and a punctured lung.

“Yo.”

Tony gives her a mock salute and she groans, head thumping against the pillows. “Yo,” She echoes, turning to face him.

He’s… A wreck. There’s trenches beneath his eyes in place of bags, his cheeks are hollow, and his normally picturesque goatee is marred by a frame of greying stubble. A ratty MIT hoodie hangs off him like rags, and if she didn’t know better, she’d think he’s either been lost in the Savannah or homeless for several months.

“Cho said your leg will be fine, long as you stay off it. You’re out of the pneumonia danger zone for that punctured lung, and your collection of bruised and broken ribs should be healed in a week or two.”

His lips move but it doesn’t really seem like he’s talking, more just letting words tumble from his lips like rocks down a cliff.

She nods. “You’ve been out for a few days. Rogers brought you in on Monday, today’s Thursday.”

“Looks like those few days feel like a few weeks to you, Tony.”

Natasha gives him a well-practiced look; Open mixed with quiet concern.

“Forgive me for not sleeping too well when a group of people who betrayed me for a list of ideals are living and breathing a few floors below where I make my coffee and cook my eggs, Romanoff,” He retorts, eyes guarded.

That one stings a little, she won’t lie. “Sorry. I guess it’s a little soon to forgive Steve.”

Tony scoffs. “ _Forgive?_ Nat, that man is lucky I haven’t fucking killed him yet. He lied to me for God knows how long then left me to die in the middle of Siberia like I meant _nothing_ to him.”

He flops into a chair at the side of her bed, dragging a hand down his face. “I don’t know why I came here. I guess I just thought I’d try and strike up a chat with you, considering you haven’t called home since you and the Independence Brigade made your big jailbreak.”

Guilt and rage clash inside Natasha’s head. Steve had told her a while ago about Siberia after necking a bottle of vodka, and no amount of emotional sterilization would stop her from feeling unrestrained anger that he’d kept it a secret for no good reason, turning their team to rubble. Still, it’s not like Tony was reaching out much, either.

“Usually, when two people burn a bridge, it’s easier to rebuild it by meeting in the middle,” She says, levering onto bruised elbows with a wince. “It’s not my fault that you think you’re perfectly blameless here, Tony. We all made mistakes, and it’s also not my responsibility to piece everything back together alone. And I missed you, I really did, but there’s no point in giving someone a rope if they’ll just cut it off and pretend it’s your fault for dropping it in the first place.”

There’s this singeing cold is his eyes, like there was fire once but it was suffocated, leaving nothing but blackened soot. He just looks tired. “You guys just left me. I don’t-“ Tony blinks, breathing deeply. “You know what? Nevermind. Just let FRIDAY know if you need anything.”

He stands and tucks callused hands into the pockets of his hoodie, but turns when Natasha calls out.

“You have people, Tony. He didn’t, not really. Barnes was all he had.”

“And that’s your explanation for leaving me in the fucking _dust,_ Natasha?!” He explodes, arms tossed in the air. His eyes are on fire and every inch of him is shaking, like a vase in a paint shaker, just a few tiny moments from shattering. “For letting them fucking _leave,_ huh? That’s it? I trusted you like a _sister._ I _loved you._ I thought that, no matter how many friends I lost in this goddam mess, I’d have you. But you chose him. You chose him, and you left me alone to deal with this shit, because no one else understands what it feels like.

“Rhodey and Pepper never had to burry their abusive father and loving mother then team up with the best friend of the man who killed them, Romanoff. They didn’t have to deal with the fallout of an international manhunt and the hours upon hours of talks it took to keep the UN from going full Minority Report on the world population. _I_ did that. While I was dealing with the fact that someone I considered a fucking _brother_ lied to me for what could’ve been _years_ about the death of my parents, I was trying to keep the world from falling over. So, thanks for having a heart of gold and choosing Uncle Sam because he’s lonely, Natasha. I appreciate it.”

Tony is panting, and his face is plastered with too many emotions to count, full of hurt and rage and pure, total, _crushing_ sadness. “Have a good nap, or whatever. Eat when the nurses bring you food and take the meds they give you because, I swear to God, if I have to spend an hour longer than absolutely necessary in this tower with you and Rogers, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

She watches him go, and curses under her breath when the doors seal behind his back.

\---

“Boss.”

He’s been staring at a blank wall for an hour, rubbing the skin on his palm raw with his thumb.

“Boss?”

FRIDAY sounds concerned, but he barely hears her beneath the static screaming in his head and veins, thoughts scrambled into an unrecognizable soup.

She sighs. “The target I’ve been watching hasn’t been accounted for in over two days, Boss. Should I take any action?”

Tony digs overgrown nails into his skin, trying to take a deep breath. His lungs feel shaky and ineffective, like a pair of balloons stuck with nails. “Just keep looking, Fri. If you figure out who’s making them do a disappearing act, then let me know. I’m going to bed.”

He knows it must be early morning at this point, no later than seven or eight. He doesn’t care. Every part of his body feels unbearably tired. The couch is stiff and uncomfortable, like it always has been, and Tony takes refuge in the familiar ache blooming in his back, drifting into a constricting, dreamless sleep.


	4. Interventions and Cool Doctors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all! terribly sorry that its taking so long to post and that the chapters themselves are so short. im doing lots of stuff atm, and sometimes taking a break from writing for a day is necessary. i hope you enjoy!  
> next chapter might take a longer time and its totally not because theres lots of sad stuff in it, no sir, not at all  
> (also at the time of posting this work is at 69 likes. nice.)  
> anyway enjoy!

Thirty thousand dollars in cash takes up more space than you’d think.

Peter has been hiding it in all the places he can think of; Underneath his mattress, beneath the floorboards of his closet, in hoodies and jackets he doesn’t wear. His safe is long discarded- The thing was junk anyway, (He’d been able to crack it by hitting its keypad with mild force,) and way too obvious. Some far-off part of his brain laughs at how absurd this is, tucking away inch-thick stacks of hundreds all around his apartment, but the present him doesn’t bother with rumination.

An unfortunate byproduct of Peter’s room-to-vault conversion is having to do his own laundry. Which, to most, is an underwhelming task, but most people also _aren’t_ metabolically enhanced teenagers who soak every inch of fabric they touch in sweat. Seriously, he has to carry around three changes of clothes in his backpack. It’s horrid.

It’s as he’s dropping a quarter into the machine that a finger taps his shoulder and he spins, expecting some imminent threat, but is faced instead with MJ, head tilt and half-smirk included.

Yeah, actually. Imminent threat.

“Hey, loser,” She says, basket of clothes braced against her pelvis. Punk rock t-shirts and thick flannels are all folded neatly, organized by band and color, so painfully Michelle that his eyes burn for a second before he offers a weak smile in reply.

“Hey, MJ.”

The smirk twists into a frown, and grief leaks into her pupils like rain down a car window, slow and devastatingly full of understanding. “Ned told me about your aunt.”

Peter nods, flicking a few knobs so his laundry begins to dry and turns, looking to the ground. “Yeah. Kinda sucks.”

He never knows what to say around her. Snarky quips fall into mumbled ruins and jokes get lodged in his throat like mortar. Sometimes it feels like a crush, but it’s hard to tell through the genuine fear that clouds his mind when he’s around her.

“How’re, uh, y’know- You guys managing?”

Peter shrugs, tucking his hands into too-tight pockets and leaning against the dryer. “We spend most of the day together, go to dialysis appointments every week or two. Ned comes over sometimes, plays games with us and stuff.”

 _I feel like I’m drowning_ , he thinks, but decides not to tack it on.

MJ sets down her basket and takes a seat on a bench, a subtle frown still pulling at the corners of her lips. “It’s pretty hard, right? Dealing with someone who’s sick?”

“Yeah. Just a little.”

She smiles and it’s sad, laced with understanding. “My grandpa died a while ago, after my mom left. Sudden, just a heart attack, stuck around for a few days then-“ Her hand chops through the air, and the smile vanishes. “Gone in his sleep.”

Peter feels the twang of sympathy and pity in his gut, but opts not to show it, knowing she’d probably smack him if he did. “Is that why you were gone for like, two weeks last semester?”

“Yeah. I just had to think about it a bit, you know? Absorb it. He helped my dad raise me. Don’t think I’d be who I am without him.”

He lets the ambience seep in for a moment, tumbling clothes and quietly-conversing patrons filling in the silence like dry erase marker. “I don’t know what I’d do without her, MJ. I don’t have anyone else.”

“You have me,” She blurts, and immediately blushes, ducking her head. “Me. And Ned. We’re here if you need help.”

“I know, and I love you guys for it, but- She’s the last family I’ve got. Even though the connection isn’t blood, it’s still,” Peter drags a hand down his face, trying to find the words to explain. “Look, alright. I’m an orphan. And Ben was the last blood I had. Now it’s just me and May, and unless there’s some aunt in like, rural Kentucky or something, there’s only two Parkers left. And it sounds dumb, but like-“

“You feel like you have to keep your family alive?” MJ provides.

“Exactly. Knowing there’s someone still here, breathing the same oxygen as me and not rotting in a casket somewhere, makes it easier.”

She nods with understanding, and it makes him feel lighter for some reason, like a bit of the haze coating his vision is attacked with Windex and some elbow grease. “Don’t kill yourself over this, Parker. I can’t promise you it’ll get better, but collapsing won’t help anyone. She needs you more than ever, y’know.”

Peter lets that sink in, the well of guilt growing just a little larger in his heart. “Yeah. She does.”

MJ looks at her watch and starts, reaching for the basket set near her feet. “Shit. I gotta go, dad’s gonna think I got stabbed or something. Text me later, okay? Don’t explode.”

He laughs, something small and fragile, and nods. “I will. And MJ?”

“What’s up?”

“Thanks.”

When she leaves with a ‘Whatever, loser’ tossed over her shoulder, part of him feels a little bit lighter.

Ю

“You need to talk to him, Pep.”

Pepper sighs when her mug clinks against the kitchen countertop, phone pressed between shoulder and ear. “He doesn’t want to see me, Rhodey, not right now. _Especially_ not in the Tower, with- Everyone who’s there. And in case you don’t remember, our last conversation didn’t end on the best terms.”

“FRIDAY’s been keeping me updated. He hasn’t left the lab in _days_. Apparently, he talked to Nat, and that ended in a shouting match. We have to do something, even if he doesn’t want us to.”

Halfway across the world in his Swedish hotel room, Rhodey drags a calloused hand down his face. “You know he started drinking again a few months ago, right? Not light, social stuff, but like- Full on Lebowski. I dropped in to say hi a few weeks ago and there was an industrial trashcan dedicated to Jameson bottles and beer cans. It’s bad, Pepper. I haven’t seem him get this deep since his parents died.”

“I mean, it makes sense. He’s basically reliving the whole experience and then some,” She says, trying to formulate some pattern of coherent thought through the migraine blooming at the edges of her temples. “Rogers coming back into his life after all this? Not even giving Tony a choice? I mean, Jesus. You know he has control issues, but- Even I’d go insane at that.”

“It’s bad,” Says Rhodey, just so the point solidifies fully.

“It is bad.”

Sometimes Pepper just has to laugh at her life. She was supposed to look at art in Paris, travel the world, then finish her law degree. Instead she ended up dating a self-made-superhero-slash-mutlibillionare, running the world’s largest tech conglomerate, and eating from cold vegan to-go cartons at five A.M. so the throws of early-morning video conferences don’t put her into a coma. She does, now, just a little chuckle, before her voice grows sad and the silence of her massive open-concept penthouse is beating down with unfeeling fists.

“He’ll push me away. You know he will.”

Rhodey makes a sound of confirmation on the other end, pausing a moment. “I’m back in at noon tomorrow. We’ll go together, alright?”

She considers. Agrees.

They say goodbyes and end the call. Some part of all of it bothers Pepper- How little she’s tried to reach out, how the tower is an hour walk and ten-minute drive at this time in the morning. Tony is a lot of different things to her, and the twisting complexities between them is part of why she loves him so much, but it’s difficult. He’s easy to love but hard to live with, like a puppy or new pair of shoes.

The migraine is a band of tension across her forehead, now, constricting and pulling her thoughts into a dense cluster. Pepper decides, with all the gusto in her battle-hardened heart, that this is a good time to take a day off.

Ⴟ

“No _actual fucking way_.”

Peter drops his third plus four onto the table and, in his most innocent, unassuming tone, says “Green.”

May looks like she’s about to throttle him. Her hand is almost too large to hold; She’s forced to shift through an inch-thick stack of cards for every play she makes, and there is _no way_ that her nephew isn’t cheating at this, because no one’s luck could possibly be this good.

Like a smug little gremlin he tosses down a green plus two, and she makes some noise twisted between a growl and a cry of pain, pulling another two reds from the deck.

“You’re cheating. You have to be. There is _no way_ that a human being can be this good at boardgames.”

Peter tilts his head and throws a six out in mercy, smirking. “Uno is a card game, for one, and two, I’m very much offended by your insinuation. This is an art, May, and frankly? I don’t think you appreciate my commitment to the perfection of it.”

She slides a four onto the deck with surgical precision, eyes narrowed to slits, and says nothing.

Peter wins that game, and the three after that. Soon the heavy heat of a Monday afternoon is leaking into the hospital like sludge, and the shitty air conditioning can’t fight it; Like David without his slingshot, its just a rumbling in the background, impotent as can be.

They play another few games before May’s treatment is over, and the nurse repeats the same ritual, pulling spindly tendrils from her veins. It never grows to be less unsettling, no matter how much he sees it.

They meet Dr. Owens in her office aftward, a small space plastered in awards and pictures of her dog and kids. It has a weidly homey aspect to it, despite the numerous diagrams of human hearts strung up from floor to ceiling, like it radiates comfort. It’s nice, really. A little unsettling, sure, but nice.

She flips through several papers on her clipboard, eyebrows knit in concentration. Peter and May sit side by side on a narrow couch, hands woven together, and watch with steadily brewing anxiety. The doctor sets her papers down carefully and leans on crossed arms, like a highschool guidance counselor set on helping a slouching senior graduate.

“Good news first,” She says, speaking slowly. They nod in tandem.

“You’re looking pretty healthy. These shorter sessions are putting less stress on your heart, which means your body can fully recover after each treatment. That’s being helped by your change in diet for sure, as well, so keep up on that.”

Dread pricks at Peter’s neck like a handful of grass at the prospect of not touching junk food for the next few months, but he swats it away. It’s a worthy cause.

May, meanwhile, gives her cardiologist a nod, fingers clenched tight. “And the bad news?”

Dr. Owens notices the quiver in her voice and is quick to reassure. “Sorry, built that up a little too much. I just want to get an MRI from you before you bump out of here, check up on the little bastard in your stomach. We can schedule one later if you’d like, but it might not be for another week or so.”

A forced exhale through her nose and May nods, shrugging. “I don’t have much to do, anyway.”

Owens makes a noise of confirmation, rising from her seat. “I’ll go book the machine. If you two could stay in the waiting room just down the hall, that’d be good. I’ll grab you when it’s ready.”

They sit down in horribly unconformable chairs and fret with getting the right position before finding it futile, more like posed statues in stiff plastic frames than people. May’s hands are fiddling idly with her keychain, little peace signs and flowers bouncing around in harsh synthetic light, and Peter knows its what she does when she’s thinking. It’s familiar from meetings with the principle, when she and Ben would both show up even if they were working, and talk to Morita for an hour straight, with him sitting there doe-eyed. It’s one of those things that both comforts and frightens him, like horror movies or disarming gunmen.

“Watcha’ thinking about?” He says, watching the glint of her keys idly.

May startles and turns. Her gaze softens and she sighs. “Just… Ben, y’know? I miss him a lot.”

She leaves it at that because it’s enough. They talk about Ben all the time, usually in passing, now. Little memories, like when he’d make pancakes on Sunday mornings or yell at the Mets for sucking so bad but would still save up spare change for tickets to a midseason game, because _You never know when they could pull through, Pete. Better to take the chance and watch an amazing game from the stands instead of our CRT._

Peter nods. His eyes sting a little, but not to the point of tears, just afterburns from painful memories. “I’m sorry he isn’t here, May.”

She whacks his shoulder softly. “No more self-blaming, kiddo. We talked about this.”

He makes a noise in protest then agrees, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. “Yeah. Just- I mean, I get it. I miss him too. All the time.”

Sometimes Peter wonders what Ben would do in their position, borderline penniless and out of options. His conscience painfully reminds him that Ben would work his ass off to help May, not become a debt collector for a dangerous criminal, but there’s not that can be done, now. Peter has dipped half of himself into poison and it’s in his veins, flooding into him like toxic waste. His thoughts is a battleground between virtue and greed, thumping beats in his head like canon fire. It hurts, all the time, but he has the presence of mind to keep May out of it. Some distant part of his head, not quite his subconscious but close, tells him he is the poison, now, and spreading his burning blood is paramount to killing puppies, so it’s easier to stay inside himself. Help where he can.

“Peter? You in there, kiddo?”

He blinks. May is squeezing his shoulder and giving him a look of concern. Dr. Owens is beside her.

“Uh, yeah, sorry, just thinking. What’s up?”

The latter jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “You wanna watch the MRI? It’s pretty cool.”

Peter wipes sweaty palms on his jeans, standing. “Oh, yeah, totally. For sure.”

It is really cool, actually. May’s inside bits slowly fill the screen as the machine finishes its scan, all contrasting in tones of white and grey. Peter can’t decipher it; He’s never been good with medicine. Instead, he turns to Owens, and asks:

“What do I do?”

It slips out on accident, like batteries flying from a hastily opened remote, flying all over the carpet and rolling under furniture.

She tilts her head before replying. “About what, exactly?”

“This,” He says, hands waving at nothing. “All of this. I- She means a lot to me, y’know? Like, everything. And If I lose her, I don’t have anyone else. Its-“

Peter breaths and his lungs feel like fire and ash. Everything is singed, flame-licked, made sensitive to the world, exposed like a nerve. Burnt just enough to make everything hurt but not enough to overload his mind so he can’t feel it. “My aunt has _cancer_. I don’t know what to do, alright? And I pretend like I do, but I- I don’t. I don’t know.”

Owens eyes him owlishly. She looks young like this, though she’s well past her mid-thirties, and her openness is like a balm on his skin after too many days in the sun. “I can’t tell you, honey. No one can, really.”

He stops to take in a breath he didn’t realize was lodged in his lungs, trapped like sunlight beaming into a dark room. She’s steadying him, hands bracing his shoulders. “This is beyond hard, Peter. I know it is, because I’ve had to deal with it myself. And I’ve watched patients and their families. And I’ve seen people like you, kids who think they can hold up the world, try and keep themselves together. It’s hard. And I don’t have a good answer.”

She sits him down in a spinny office chair, dropping to a crouch. “You will struggle. She will, too. The absolute best advice I can give you is to take care of each other. I don’t mean to be cliché, but love is the best medicine. We can exchange heart valves and hand out prescriptions all we want, but the mind is just as important. You two have to stay strong for each other, alright? No matter what it’s gonna take.”

Peter is staring at his shoes. His head hurts, like he got a botched lobotomy. The war in his head is still there, screaming, and if anything he feels worse, now. Worse, but- Guided. Like seeing the finish line in the last quarter mile of a marathon. He swallows thickly and stands, encasing Owens in a hug. It’s sudden, and even he finds the compulsivity strange, but cancer makes people compassionate, he guesses. She reciprocates shortly after, smelling like citrus hair wash and hand sanitizer.

“Thanks,” He says.

“Don’t mention it.”

They part after a few seconds, meeting May as she emerges from the bathroom with an exam robe in one hand and her purse in the other.

“I want a day or so to look over the scan and your test results. Ill check in tomorrow,” Owens says, taking the robe. “You guys can skedaddle. Have a good afternoon!”

May holds his hand on the drive home, squeezing it on occasion. They watch _How I Met Your Mother_ and eat low-fat popcorn, and the pineapple episode still makes them laugh even if they’ve both seen it a hundred times. They eat dinner at the dining table together, spaghetti squash, and it’s actually so good Peter almost spits out his first bite because he’s sure its laced with something.

Nightime is their only reprieve from New York’s napalm-like summer heat, and Peter takes it with gratitude. He’s tapping his fingers to some miscellaneous indie music and staring at his ceiling, counting the pauses between flashing lights from cars below.

A ding from his backpack. He eyes the side pocket where the burner phone lives, like the guilt seeping into his bones will go away if he just teleports it out of reality.

He acquiesces. It’s a message from Mason: 

“Boss has a big job. Call when you can for details.”

Peter throws the phone back into his backpack with perfect accuracy and burrows into the sheets. His life feels like too much of a movie, today, and reality needs to take a break.

Just one day. That’s all he needs.

Ю

“Tony.”

Rhodey knocks again, Pepper by his side.

“ _Tony._ Please, man. Just open a peep hole or something. We’ve been here for an hour.”

The lab door remains sealed, mocking them, and Pepper takes over. She tries her override code and is surprised to find it still works, which earns her a _why the fuck didn’t you try that a second ago?_ look from her interventionist partner-in-crime as they enter.

It stinks of week-old vomit and machine grease. Like mistakes, really.

Joy Division’s _Digital_ blares over the speakers as he works beneath a car, a can of sierra mist lying next to the creeper. _Day in, day out, day in, day out_ thumps through subwoofers like an anthem. Rhodey kicks his best friend in the shin just as Ian Curtis sings his first _don’t ever fade away_ , because he’s nothing if not a sucker for dramatic timing.

Tony rolls from the car’s undercarriage with a plastic grin molded on his lips, sweat and oil slicking his hair back. “Well hello, Sourpuss!” He greets, and upon noticing Pepper, lets the smile slip a little. “Hey, Pep.”

She gives him a curt nod. Rhodey gives Tony a hand up, and now they’re standing in a triangle, only missing a banner and some cheap Walmart cookies for a true, by-the-books intervention. The inventor looks between them with narrowed, suspicious eyes, cleaning filthy hands on an equally filthy towel. “If you guys are here to do the ‘You should talk about what’s going on Tony, the excessive drinking and self-isolation is bad for your health’ bit, don’t bother, please. If I have to withstand another lecture about what’s good for me, I might _actually_ lose it.”

“FRIDAY, pause the music, please,” Says Pepper, arms crossed in her ‘this is business time and you won’t fuck with me’ pose. She stares him down and it’s binding, like black ice to asphalt, making everything else feel slippery. “You haven’t left the lab in four days. I checked. This place smells like some god-awful fusion of burnt hair and Colt 45, the bags under your eyes tell me sleep is second priority, and your neckbeard makes you look like a narcoleptic DMV worker.”

She takes a few steps forward and squeezes his shoulder, head tilted. “At the very least, leave here and stay with Rhodey, or me. Get out of the tower and away from- Them. For us?”

Tony barks a sharp laugh, wrenching from her grasp and going for a bottle of water on the counter. He takes a swig and sets it down, leaning on the tabletop. “And leave my Tower, absolute marvel of engineering and one of my personal crown jewels, in the hands of international war criminals? No. I appreciate the checkup, but-“

“Oh, for God’s sake, Tony.”

Rhodey points an accusatory finger at the industrial trashcan stuffed full of empty liquor bottles and microwave pizza boxes in the corner, like damning evidence in a court case. “ _But_ isn’t an argument you can make here. I thought you got out of this stuff, man. You haven’t been drinking this bad since-“

“My parents died, thanks, I’m aware,” He says coldly, chill seeping through his bones. “Please just leave. Both of you. Right now. Because screaming matches are painfully exhausting, and I’m really not in the mood to have another.”

“We don’t need to have a screaming match. You need to get away from this place, Tony. Please.”

Pepper’s voice is pleading. She’s desperate, a rare occurrence, and it comes out in a horrible, dread-drenched stream, like a river laced with poison. “This isn’t healthy. I’m _worried._ _We’re_ worried about you, for God’s sake. You’ve spent the last half a year in a drunken stupor. You’re not a moron, you know what toxic habits look like. You’ll hurt yourself even worse if you keep soaking in all this stress and rage.”

“And I _don’t care._ ”

Tony is shouting. He doesn’t mean to. The screaming thing wasn’t a lie, he’s tired of yelling. Especially after Natasha. “Sorry. Just. I do not _care_ if I hurt myself because all I’ve been doing is hurting, Pepper. Ever since Barnes and his spangle-clad bastard of a best friend beat me half to death. I nearly got the kid killed with my shit a while ago, I don’t need to introduce more risk into the world by- By leaving this place behind. At least if I’m here, I can watch them. Make sure they don’t do anything.”

“What are they going to do, Tony?” Rhodey says. His braces whir as he steps forward, and to Tony, it sounds like a beehive inside his skull. “They might be criminals, but they’re not villains. The Tower will be fine without you here, FRIDAY can make sure of it. Hell, I’ll stay here, if you want. Under lockdown, right in the lab.”

Another drink of water. It feels like oil sliding down his throat, clogging his airways. “I’m not leaving you here with them. I’m not leaving FRIDAY here with them. I’m staying, end of story. Now get out, please.”

Tony has his eyes locked on the ground like he’s watching a pay-per-view MMA match and it’s the final round, fighters are on their last legs, standing with blooming concussions and split lips. He can feel their eyes on him like brands, searing marks into his skin, but he can’t meet their eyes.

Rhodey sighs, something that sounds long-suffering but cut off. Tony feels the guilt prickling at his spine when he turns and can practically _hear_ Pepper diverting her glare to him, but it doesn’t matter. After a moment, the doors slide shut and lock, leaving the two of them alone in Tony’s own personal hell.

“I miss you.”

She’s sad. He always knows when she is, because her words make time bend when they leave her mouth and her frown is like poking the fabric of reality with a knitting needle. It gives him a headache.

Tony forces his neck up and looks her in the eye. “Not sure why,” He says, smiling weakly.

Pepper jumps up onto the table next to him. “We… We ended our relationship on an argument. And I resent that, because you’re _very_ good at arguing, and it makes things hard to work out.”

“You wanted a break and I felt like I couldn’t help you anymore, Pep. You’re much smarter than me when it comes to this stuff, I’m sure you know that.”

She nods in acknowledgement. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean its easier to come back and say ‘hey, let’s talk out our differences like adults’. You’re the counter to my rationality.”

A snort. “I’m a mess, Pep. And I-“

He sighs. “I love you and Rhodey. But right now? I don’t want help. And I- _know_ that’s not healthy, and I know it makes you guys worried. And I drink, stay locked in here all the time, because it makes me feel safe. This place is layered with enough tech and defenses to kill three small armies, and when I’m drunk, I don’t feel like Steve Rogers is going to crack my ribcage open like a six pack of beer and shotgun the blood from my heart, so. It’s easier.”

Pepper blinks at he gruesome metaphor but shakes it off. “I know it is. But could you… At least come to my apartment? Just for a few days. Decompress.”

“I don’t feel okay with-“

“Leaving the tower in the hands of FRIDAY, I know,” She bites her lip. “Could you do me a favor?”

Tony nods, head tilted.

“Do it for me. Or Rhodey and I. I know you’ve got a thing for being the cause of stomach ulcers, but at the very least, try and spare us for a few more years.”

“Just a few days?”

“Just a few days,” She confirms. “Decompress. Stop drinking. Let us- Let us try and work some stuff out, okay? Just for a little while.”

Tony takes the hand she offers him. It feels more like aloe on a sunburn than it does total salvation, but he wallows in it.

Just one day, maybe two. That’s all he needs.


	5. Steeped In Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: blood and gore.  
> also im sorry in advance

Breakfast that morning is a bowl of oats with berries and honey. It’s really good, and May didn’t even burn it, which is honestly an impressive achievement. The berries are fresh, and the honey is local, so Peter can’t really complain.

They watch the morning news until ten, sipping mugs of tea. Saturday mornings are always the calm ones; They come in slowly and sluggishly, like a foam pit after the trampoline run-up. May makes it an express purpose that they have aunt-nephew time on the weekend, but she recognizes his itch to put the suit on and get to the streets, so she shoos him away and asks for him to call if he’ll be late for dinner at seven.

Peter knows he will be. It bothers him, like most things in his new career path do, but he pushes it down, away from the organized swirls in his head and into deep storage to be mulled over and analyzed at a later date. The suit gets stuffed haphazardly into the main compartment of his backpack alongside a folded duffel, and he climbs from the window, making haste down the fire escape and onto the streets of New York. He grabs the burner from his bag before slinging it over his shoulder, unlocking the phone and dialing Mason’s number.

He picks up on the third ring. “Hey. Sending you an address. Be there in 10.”

Its for an abandoned apartment complex in the Bronx. Peter recognizes it; At one point, he wanted to make it his secret lair, but May told him making a secret superhero HQ in a building that could very well be demoed at a moment’s notice would be fiscally irresponsible, so that idea went out the window.

“Got it. Meet you there.”

The suit slides on easily like it always has, worn spandex a second layer to his skin. It doesn’t feel right anymore, really, not with how he’s using it. The fact that he hasn’t gone out on a patrol since his last hit registers distantly, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He can’t, not anymore.

Early morning sunshine washes over the streets below as he swings, tinged with a soft, glowing heat. Every dip to the ground satisfies an itch in his stomach, like salad after a camping trip, clean and simple. Peter lets himself forget, just for a little while, that he’s not on the way to stop a mugging or save a cat. The war is his head quiets, just a little, before he lands with a tucked roll onto the warehouse’s asphalt parking lot.

He dips inside, a familiar tingle of fear itching at his scalp. In the corner sits Mason, hunched over a piece of weaponry with a soldering iron in hand. To his left, leaning against a metal table and nursing a cup of coffee, is a tall, densely packed bald guy, wrapped in a canvas jacket. Recognition plinks in Peter’s head like a radar, and his eyes narrow involuntary. “You’re the guy that broke my ribs with a pneumatic shock fist thing, aren’t you?”

The man looks up and nods. “Sorry about that. Gotta do what you gotta do.”

Peter pushes down the hum of affirmation rising in his throat and keeps his gaze on the man a few seconds longer before switching it to Mason. “So, what’s the job?”

“Security,” He says, looking up. “Group of guys made an offer to sell our product back to us, what with you- Y’know, doing your thing. You just gotta stick around and make sure nothing fishy goes down while Herman here makes the exchange.”

“And what’s the pay?”

“Fifty grand.”

Peter’s eyes nearly drop out of his head. That would mean only a handful more jobs before he could afford May’s surgery, be done with this mess, move past it. It could mean salvation.

“I’m in,” He says, wincing at the speed of his reply. “I’m in. When’s the drop going down?”

Mason checks his watch and attaches one more wire, putting out his iron. “An hour from now, in an alcove near the Hudson. You’ll get your payment once we’re back here.”

It’s getting scarily easy to do these things, now. He’s shocked at how simply he falls into place, the greed pulling strings in his head and twisting his blood into corrosive sludge. The warpath his mind trudges through is ridden with dying whispers of guilt and sorrow, but he’s numb to it now; The empathy exists, still, like a brick wall between the parts of himself he hates and those he barely even knows to be present anymore. Desperation is his only motivation and fear is his catalyst. Knowing how disappointed May would be if she found out about what he’s doing is a twisting dagger in his gut, sharp and jagged and ruthless, the pain unrelenting. He feels thoughtless and simultaneously so full of thought that the world is a haze of objectivity and mission plans, lines of code on a computer screen, artificial and blue.

Peter is afraid that a stranger has slid into his skin and taken place of him, walking the same streets and saying the same words he does, but with malice, with horrible, unfeeling dullness. He is afraid that, even when this is over, when he can go home to May and watch sitcoms while eating pizza instead of quinoa and vegan chili, that the stranger will still be there. That he always will be.

Peter fears the imposter, but knows deep down, in some rotting, horrible alcove of his mind, that the imposter is _him._

They arrive at the underpass. It’s unimpressive, dull and smelling of sewage and vomit. The Hudson has never been New York’s crown jewel, but sometimes he forgets how awful the pollution in it actually is until he’s up close and personal with the stench, eyes watering and head cloudy.

Herman pulls duffels of cash from the van, dropping them onto the dirt-covered concrete with a thud. From his perch in a nearby tree, Peter can make out a red pickup with a U-Haul on its tail approaching, at least four men combined. They’re decked in all black and are likely armed, making his spider-sense buzz uncomfortably at the nape of his neck. He itches the trigger of his webshooters and slinks further into the branches, hoping to avoid being spotted unless absolutely necessary.

Both cars pull to a stop side-by-side and their drivers dismount, adjusting thigh holsters and tugging down shirts. His sixth sense buzzes more harshly when Peter recognizes the red truck’s driver as the guy that shot him in the gut at one of his first collections, the lines of his face harsh against midnoon sun.

“Product, then cash,” Herman says, arms crossed. One hand is wrapped in the shocker gauntlet, revamped with higher capacity charge cells that are fully capable of throwing a person dozens of feet.

Red Truck Guy nods to the U-Haul guys, and they begin unloading crates of weaponry, several of which take three men to carry. Mason didn’t say anything about heavy stuff, and the fact that they only brought a van makes him even more antsy, bringing his senses into a screaming high.

Suddenly, the precognitive corner of his mind is satisfied when a bullet comes within four inches of his chest, burying itself where he was a mere second and a half ago. The report of a rifle follows the round, and Peter spots a man hauling ass just as another several shots go off, and now Herman is on the floor, blood pooling from his sternum and neck.

Red Truck Guy has his pistol drawn, barrel still smoking, and his goonies sprinting towards where Peter tumbled from his perch. He manages to roll from the round one fires at him, but the next catches his calf, cutting straight through wiry muscle and digging into the ground. He shouts in pain but soldiers on, bull charging both men and going into a flip, webbing their heads together midair. His oppressor is shouting, taking aim with his weapon, and another round grazes Peter’s shoulder. He falls with a scream, clenching the trough of hollowed flesh the bullet dug, blood pouring from the cleaved wound.

The man and his friend hop back into the truck and pull away, tires screeching when the hit concrete and zip off onto the highway.

Peter grits his teeth and limps over to Herman, but his pulse is long gone, dried blood caking the hole in his carotid. He curses and screams, punching a dent into one of the van’s doors. He should’ve listened to his senses, then this guy wouldn’t be dead, and he wouldn’t be bringing home nothing but bullet holes and blood loss to May.

He tells Karen to dial Mason and waits, sitting in the car’s trunk with shaky hands clenched between his thighs.

“What’s up? Something go bad?”

Mason’s voice startles him. “Uh- Uh, yeah, um. Herman’s dead. I’m sorry, they-“

“What?”

His voice is strained, on the verge of tears. “Herman’s dead. They jumped me then shot him. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, oh Jesus. Fuck. Okay- Um, how bad are your injuries? Can you walk, drive?”

Peter shakes the white noise from his ears. His eyes are closed but he still sees the corpse, and though its not his first bloody body (Ben took that crown, drenched in crimson from a gut shot at point blank, another death that was all his fault,) it still sticks like a bug to fly paper, locked into his vison like some sick polaroid. “Y-Yeah. Yeah, I can drive. They left the weapons and money behind.”

“Okay. Okay. Um,” Mason sounds like he’s panicking, and that doesn’t make Peter feel great, but he supposes he doesn’t deserve to. “Load as many of the weapons and cash into the van as you can, and- Get back here, to the warehouse. We’ll figure out Herman later.”

He agrees and starts loading, wincing at the pain rocking his body. Even with adrenaline the pain is almost intolerable, and blood is still seeping out in scarily large amounts before he finally finishes stacking the crates and duffels into the van’s rear. He sprays a copious amount of web fluid on both wounds and hops into the driver’s seat, thanking whatever god still lives that the keys are in the ignition.

He navigates to his destination numbly, vision hazy and dull. The windows are tinted darkly, something he’s beyond thankful for, given the fact that he’s drenched in blood. He pulls into the warehouse’s parking lot forty someodd minutes later and stumbles into Mason’s arms after opening the door, now unable to use his leg. He’s lucky; It feels like another through-and-through, which means infection won’t have to be an issue.

“Hey, Jesus, you’re messed up- Go sit down at those tables, patch yourself up, there’s pain pills and suture. I’ll bring the van in.”

Peter does as he’s told, mindlessly ripping off his mask and tossing it aside along with the suit, jumping onto the counter in his boxers. The pills hurt going down, like swallowing a handful of pebbles, and his hands are shaking like a drunk’s as he rips the webs from his leg and begins stitching. The bullet had torn right through his Achilles tendon, and he has no idea how he was able to walk. The fibers are all nearly separated, save for a few, so he sprays it down with saline and starts stitching. The sooner it’s closed and not leaking blood, the better, and the faster his recovery will be.

The shoulder is a different story. There’s a pinky-finger sized chunk of flesh missing from where the round carved its path, weeping blood slowly. He feels a null ache in the muscle as he irrigates it, wincing at the reddened flesh and torn ligaments. It’ll heal fine, hopefully, but it will hurt. A lot.

He begins bandaging the wounds just as Mason hops from the driver’s seat, eyes growing wide when he spots Peter’s face. He knows it’s not great to show your illegal arms dealer employer that you’re, in fact, a seventeen-year-old, but there’s not much to be done about it now.

Mason thrusts a backpack full of cash into Peter’s hands and stands back. “There’s fifty grand in that bag. Here’s-“ He drops the duffel and takes out another few stacks, handing them to him. “Another thirty. Just- Get out of here, man. You’re way, way too young to be doing this kind of work.”

The basic addition hurts his head, making a migraine bloom at his temples. Thirty plus eighty- Makes a hundred and ten thousand dollars. Enough to pay for the surgery, and then some. Peter’s heart thumps and his eyes grow wide at the absurd amount of money laying in his blood-soaked lap, and he rushes to thrust it back at Mason. “No- No, man, this is too much. I got your friend killed, I shouldn’t even be-“

“Just take the fucking money, kid. Please.”

His eyes aren’t kind, but they aren’t angry, either. He realizes with a jolt that it’s pity. “That’s part of Herman’s cut, anyway. Not like it’ll be put to much use in a lockup somewhere.”

Peter stuffs the cash into his backpack and stands, pulling the suit over his body. The viscera makes it stick to him, and he feels grimy and disgusting, like the evil in his blood has finally begun to seep into the real world.

He turns to Mason before sliding the mask on. “Thanks,” He says, and finds the guilt still beating in his head like a canon. “And I’m sorry. Again. I wasn’t fast enough.”

“It’s not your fault, kid. Just- Whatever you’re doing with all that dough better be worth it.”

 _It will be_ , he thinks, _even if I’m not._

“Bye, Mason.”

The entire swing home Peter feels like he’s floating on a cloud, being carried higher and higher up. The world passes like a time-lapse below his feet, seconds blending together like fruit in a smoothie, mashed into one homogeneous goo that he passes through all at once. When he finally lands on the fire escape, time smacks back into his body with a horrible, devastating slam, because through his bedroom window, he can see black smoke billowing from the kitchen.

The window slides open silently. His footsteps don’t make noise, and he finds the lack of a blaring alarm strange, because May probably burnt something in the toaster again and that usually means they have to have a whole talk with their landlord after the complex gets evacuated, so he think she must have sorted it ou-

His foot thumps into a mat of brunette hair and blood.

May is laying back-down on the kitchen tile, head bleeding slowly from a miniscule wound. On the stove, a pan of eggs long past the charcoal stage continues to burn, devoid of smell.

Peter turns the heat off and dumps the pan into the sink. It hits the tub’s sides with ringing finality, but he doesn’t hear it. He dials 911. The ringtone feels pointless and null and so, so quiet, screaming silence against his throbbing head. He’s so tired. He just wants to sleep.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“My aunt is dead.”

The words leave his lips but he doesn’t hear them.

“O-kay. Honey, what’s your address?”

 _Honey._ Ben used to call him that. It makes him feel funny.

He doesn’t remember what feeling is.

Apparently, he recites the address, because the vaguely southern lady says, “Just hang tight, paramedics are on the way.”

Peter ends the call. The phone drops from his hand, swinging a few inches above the ground. The two of them always laughed at how silly it was to still have a landline, but May would always argue devil’s advocate. _Sometimes your phone is dead, or there’s no cell service. It can be handy._

He showers and changes clothes. The blood swirls in a maroon cyclone down the drain, mixed with scorching hot water. The part of his head that’s still intact somehow tells him to put on a hoodie and jeans to hide the massive bandages covering his bullet wounds, so he does, and opens the door when the EMTs arrive.

It’s not the nice lady and the guy with spiky orange hair this time. It’s a tall, thin Latino guy and a stout man in his forties, carrying a gurney and medical supplies. They both ask him something, but Peter hears nothing, just constant null all around his head, no silence or buzzing, no quiet Spanish ballets played over a trashy radio they’d had for years.

He just stands there as they check May’s pulse, kneeled over her body. The short one gives CPR as the tall guy presses a stethoscope against her collarbone, and Peter notices the gray at the edge of his temples, how much older the guy is than he looks.

They load her onto a gurney. Somehow, Peter ends up in the back of the ambulance, but he doesn’t mind. The sharp scent of antiseptic keeps him locked in the now, staring at a translucent cabinet. It’s full of needles and vials, probably full of a bunch of medicine, and he wonders why its there.

He’s in the waiting room, now. Someone has pressed a cup of water into his hands and sips it idly, picking at the little paper rim. It comes unstuck easily, rolls up uninhibited without a single tear. Peter envies its fortitude.

Some indeterminate, hazy amount of time passes. He can’t really tell anymore and, truthfully, he finds it hard to care. It’s so much easier to float like this, in a haze between consciousness, like dangling from the hem of his own jeans, bordering on dreams and reality.

“Peter? Sweetie?”

Owens is there, knelt in front of him. He directs his observation to her face, freckled and soft. He thinks it would be nice to look at, would make him happy, if that was something he was capable of experiencing. “Can you hear me, Peter?”

He hums.

“May- May had a stroke. She’s gone, Peter. I’m so, so sorry.”

There’s tears at the edges of the doctor’s eyes. She looks devastated. Peter wraps his arms around her back, because he hates looking at someone so sad, and Owens returns, falling into him. “I’m so, so sorry, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright. You did the best you could.”

He doesn’t know what to say, really. It’s hard to decipher the right words through the great null weight pressing him, flatting his mind out into a sheet of unthinking matterstuff, like the world got reset and he’s the bacterial floor of the worldsea as the Cambrian explosion takes place. He is what the world feeds from and he doesn’t feel anything about it, not rage or sadness or pain. He is the inverse of being.

“-and you’ll have to talk to her soon- Peter? You listening?”

Owens has pulled back, rubbing his upper arms and looking him in the eye. He shakes his head to clear his thoughtless mind. “No, no, sorry. What’s up?”

“Your social worker will have to talk to you soon. It doesn’t have to be now, but-“

“Can I just go home?”

Peter sounds weak, drained, pathetic. He hates the whine seeping into his words. “Sorry, I- I- I’m just _tired._ I’m so, so, so tired, Ms. Owens. I really want to sleep.”

She nods. “Of course, sweetie. I’ll call you a cab and then drop by tomorrow, okay?”

He agrees with a hum. There’s still some part that hopes it’ll be normal when he wakes up, May fretting over the holes riddling his body, bringing him soup and crackers and Big Gulp cups full of water.

 _Hope is a useless thing_ , the poison in him says. _You will be washed away like she was._

The cab is small and cold and worn, something that feels so purely New York it makes his heart burn. Owens offers to ride with him, but he denies the offer, pulling the hood over his head and slinking down into the worn leather.

The apartment door is still open, pan full of burnt eggs sitting in the sink. There’s a pool of blood in the kitchen where May hit her head, staining the wood of their little table where they’d eat meals and Peter would poke her bun and she’d flick his nose. The tile is soaked in red, and in his pure delirium he pretends it’s spilled ketchup, because she always had her burgers and fries with a mountain of the stuff.

On the counter sits a clock, its’ seconds ticking by. Its four fifty-two P.M. Peter wonders when May died, when she _really_ died. The doctors will have a number written down on a clipboard somewhere, to be filed away with the rest of her medical history, probably in a grotesque manila folder with DECEASED stamped on the front.

He strips to his boxers and falls into bed. The backpack full of money sits in the corner, mocking him. Like Herman’s corpse it sticks to his eyes, merciless, and he can’t shake it. It taunts him like a specter, shapeless and purposeful.

As something like sleep starts seeping into the edges of his mind, darkness starting to envelope him in obsidian tendrils, he sighs. It’s the first good luck he’s had all day.

Ю

Tony’s phone pings halfway through season one of _Everybody Loves Raymond,_ and his hand itches to check the notifications. Pepper swats him away and grabs it instead, unlocking the screen. Her eyes widen.

“What is it, Pep? What happened?”

His heart is beating faster, out of control, dread seeping into his veins. She puts a grounding hand on his arm, placing the phone in his lap. The screen has a notification from FRIDAY: _Shootout near Hudson River. Several crates of Vulture weapons and a great deal of blood found at location. Camera footage unrecoverable._

He has the AI link through into his phone, and holds it to one ear. “FRI. Any of the rogues know about this?”

“No, Boss,” She replies. “However, due to the sensitive nature of this case, I would heavily advise you to seek out their assistance.”

“Sensitive nature, FRI?”

A pause. When she speaks, there’s a horrible tone of worry in her voice. “Two men were found with Spider-Man’s web formula binding their heads together. Additionally, CSI found blood splatter and fabric samples matching his type and the specialty suit material you designed, respectively.”

Tony’s blood is cold, freezing. There’s ice in his heart. His vision is a tunnel and it leads nowhere. “Are you saying the kid was at that crime scene, FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Boss. And he appears to be very heavily injured.”

He stomps down the curses and bile threatening to wrench themselves out of his throat and takes a deep breath. One step at a time. “Start canvasing hospitals for a kid in his late teens with gunshot wounds. Also, get the rogues somewhere together. Preferably a room with that specialty CS gas, in case I get tired of Rogers’s bullshit. And get me a car, preferably fast.”

“Tony, wait,” Pepper reaches a hand out, confusion and concern in her eyes. “What are you doing?”

It’s not a _what are you doing, I don’t know the point_ question. It’s a _I thought you promised to take a second, and now you’re right back in the fray_ question. “I- I gotta help the kid, Pep.”

“What kid?” She says, and he curses himself, because _no shit_ she didn’t know.

“Spider-Man. He’s a sixteen year old and is probably bleeding to death because I wasn’t good enough at playing Sherlock, so-“

“Stop for a second.”

She’s squeezing his forearm like it’s her last tether to Earth, trying to convey the strangling worry tugging at her mind. “The rogues can handle this. You shouldn’t expose yourself to that again, not so soon.”

Tony looks down to her, eyebrows knit. In place of worry there is pure, suffocating fear, and it’s digging into him with ruthless nails. “This isn’t about me.”

It’s all he can say before he’s running from the room, snagging his coat from the hangar before dashing out the door, leaving Pepper with nothing but the meaningless hum of a late 90’s sitcom and an earth-shaking realization:

Spider-Man is a _kid._


	6. A Broken Heart is Blind

Natasha, finally past the bedridden stage of recovery, is able to limp her way around the medbay and Tower as a whole. Sneaking through shining hallways and curling up in tiny nooks satisfies some deep itch- Black Widow might be her name, but she’s much more of a cat than a spider.

It’s the sneaking that leads her to a conference room full of angry ex-Avengers and one barely-contained-rage current one, sitting crowded around a table with plastic water cups. She presses an ear to the door and listens to the grumble of Tony’s voice, sounding tired and stressed.

“I’m _aware_ that I didn’t alert you all to my quote-unquote ‘investigation’. And believe me, I’ve paid the price for that.”

The creak of a chair. “Look. Rogers, you know how little I want you in my Tower right now, and I know how much you want the people who injured Nat and endangered the rest of your team. I’m willing to work together on this one, be amiable, if you assist in tracking down the dealers and buyers. I have some… Related business to deal with.”

Steve’s voice, low yet steady. “I’m willing to do that. What business are you referring to?”

“Spider-Man, that guy you fought at the airport in Brooklyn? He was injured in the fight.”

Tony sounds absolutely wrecked, like the words are draining the life right from his bones. They’re heavy with guilt and anger. There’s a pause in the room before Sam replies, voice tinted with curiosity. “What was his role there? Do you know?”

Another pause. It sounds like Tony is considering whether he can trust Wilson, as though there weren’t years of teamwork between them. Something like a realization hits her suddenly, but she files it away, tuning back into the conversation. “No. I’m gonna track him down, see if he knows anything, and if he needs medical. Then we’ll rendezvous and iron out the mission plan. Deal?”

Wanda now. “That’s it? Shouldn’t we work through the information we’ve got here more, first?”

“That’s Mr. Red-White-and-Blue’s prerogative, not mine. You all sort it out and contact me later.”

It’s evident in his tone that the only reason he’s not doing just that is because the anxiety of being in the same room as the Rogues is crushing, unrelenting. It sounds like he’s just got done trudging through a desert and had to make excuses to not go on an expedition through the Himalaya as a vacation afterward.

Through the door, Natasha hears Tony stand abruptly and move for the door, but her injured leg hinders her movement too severely. Suddenly, she’s being pushed by the stained hardwood, stumbling backward. He clicks the door shut and fixes her with narrowed eyes, as though he’d known she was there the whole time and was just waiting to cause her inconvenience. 

“Romanoff,” He greets, voice cold. “I’d love to string up a banner and have an intervention about your eavesdropping habits, but as I’m sure you know, there’s things to be done, so. Toodles!”

He waves callused fingers at her and strides off towards his lab, shoulders hunched.

“Good luck with the kid!” She calls.

Tony stiffens, turning. His eyes have something guarded and careful deep inside the irises, like he’s an abused dog and she’s trying to scratch his ears. “Thanks,” He says, voice thin.

“I- I’m sorry, by the way. For what I said a few days ago.”

He snorts. “Which part? Where you blamed me for being hurt that one of my best friends lied to me for years, or where you claimed arrogance for abandoning me without a second thought?”

The words are bitter and sharp against her skin. “You think that decision didn’t hurt me either, Tony?”

Natasha limps toward him, using the wall as a support. Her leg hurts like hell, the skin grafts still inflexible and tense. It hurts to breath, both through her abused ribs and stinging eyes, but she soldiers on. “God, I just. I keep trying to figure out how to apologize to you for this, but I can’t. I miss you so much, every part of me does. I love you. But its-“

“Hard. Yeah, it is.”

Tony leans against the wall. He’s still shut off, but it’s more like a closed door than a locked vault. There’s openings, little cracks where light can seep through.

She slides down next to him. “This team, all of you guys, its- Everything to me. Everything. And when the Accords came around,” Natasha shakes her head, hands up. “I saw the schism immediately. It split us right in half, Tony, and I tried _so hard_ to bring us together, work as a whole, but I couldn’t.

“In that hangar, I made a decision. I knew for a fact that I had to do something drastic, and if that meant- If that meant betraying you so you’d look at it as more than a surface level problem? So be it. And what I said about Rogers needing me more than you then, I meant it. I don’t mean it now, knowing everything, but in the moment-“

“ _In the moment_ , Nat, you abandoned me.”

He’s bitter and angry and _sad,_ so unshakably sad. His bones hurt and most fibers of his being want to leave, do something to help the kid, but the rest tell him to finish this. “You get that, right? It- It would’ve been different if you _stayed_ , and we could’ve talked about this when it was _fresh_ , when I _needed you._ But you just- Poof. Vanished from my life like a ninja turtle. Just- Just _left._ ”

Tears are welling at the corners of Tony’s eyes, emotions in spillover that he can’t control. Natasha leans her head against his knee, a fluffy mess of bright red curls. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

He sinks down next to her and she moves closer, wrapping him in a hug. “Everything that was going on, all I was thinking about was _me._ And that’s- That’s not okay. You’ve been ruminating in this for too long, and that’s my fault, too.”

Natasha links their hands together and leans her head against his shoulder. “But I miss you, Tony. And I- I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this.”

“It’s deeper than that.”

Tony squeezes her hands and looks over. “I think- After what happened with Rogers? Finding out all this stuff, being one of the reasons we all split up?”

The words take some searching, but once he finds them, they flow out easily, like water from the tap, laminar and clean. “It carved a lot out of me. I feel like there’s a hole in my head where my heart used to be. I’ve spent the last half a year in a drunken stupor. I broke up with Pepper-“ At her gasp, he shrugs. “Well, I called it a ‘break’, but it was a breakup. I couldn’t handle being around other people anymore. All my empathy is just drained. And I don’t think that is something I can fix by making amends with you, you know?”

“You don’t feel like you _deserve_ to?”

The realization hits her like a tennis racket to the skull, with a resounding twang. Natasha slaps his knee softly with her free hand, glaring. “Tony, you’re the most touchy-feely person I know. That’s part of why I- Feel so easy around you, really. You’re one of the few people I love and trust because I know you _care,_ more than most people in the world do. It’s what makes you _you._

“Let me ask you this,” She says. “Would you be looking for Peter Parker if you didn’t care?”

He jolts, twisting. “How the hell do you know his name?”

“I’m a spy, Tony. I do my digging, especially about way-too-young superheros I meet on runways in Germany. Now answer the question.”

“I- No. I wouldn’t.”

The first part doesn’t even require a reply, because _duh,_ so she just nods. “Exactly. So…”

Natasha pulls her head from his shoulder and turns, rubbing her thumb over his. “I’m willing to work through this, but later. Because you need to find that kid.”

Tony sighs and nods. “Yeah. I do.”

He stands and offers her a hand, expression something more open, like the door’s been opened a crack. She takes it and, with considerable effort, climbs to her feet. They eye each other for a moment before he jerks a thumb over one shoulder, towards his lab. “I gotta go make sure the kid isn’t bleeding to death. Try to rest?”

Natasha cracks a smile, already limping back toward the medbay. “No promises.”

Ю

The Parker’s apartment is a mess.

There’s a pan in the sink plastered with burnt remnants of what could be eggs, cooked to the point that they’re an indecipherable mess. The cabinets are open, missing food and to-go containers, the fridge open and humming quietly. To the left, there’s a landline, hanging by its curled cord, and next to that, the thing concerning Tony the most, is a small pool of dried, crusted blood.

He picks through the apartment methodically, checking and double-checking every nook and cranny despite the staggering panic and guilt picking at his mind.

Peter’s room resembles the kitchen’s apartment; His suit lies in the corner, covered in dried blood. The hamper that used to live in his closet is tipped over, spreading clothes across the hardwood floors. He checks the bathroom and finds it covered in blood, the packaging for several large bandages and gauze littering the floor. Red patterns the tile in droplets, a Picasso of viscera, and there’s smeared handprints of it on the shower curtain and cabinets.

“Jesus _fuck_ kid, what’d you get yourself into?”

Tony peeks around the horror movie scene for a minute more then heads out into the living room, looking for clues. Nothing. He heads back to Peter’s room and does a double sweep, sees nothing- Then a floorboard creaks.

The hunch blooms in his chest, different than a idea, but still solid. He fetches a flathead from the desk nearby and pries it up, gasping when he finally exposes the hidey hole.

It’s fucking _stuffed_ with cash.

There’s at least ten grand in bills packed into the space, so tightly fit that they were actually threatening to push the board out of its seating. Suddenly, Tony is overwhelmed with dread in place of worry, a thousand scenarios running through his head. What in the _hell_ was Peter doing to get this much cash?

_And could it have gotten him killed?_

A further search reveals a dozen more stashes throughout the room, all hidden in tiny, near-unnoticeable places. The pile of money on the floor grows until there’s a stack of hundreds a foot tall, teetering there like some kind of a demonic monolith. He counts every hundred and sums it to thirty thousand exactly, sick worry growing in his chest like the supercell before a tornado.

Tony heads back to the kitchen and its dangling landline. A dial tone hums through the receiver, obnoxious and offensive, and he grabs the gently swinging cable, hanging the phone up on it’s mount. To the left, the red light of an answering machine blinks slowly, deadly, the rush of adrenaline before a fall.

He presses down on the play button. A second passes, pure bliss as the device whirs to life, before a woman’s voice plays, prefaced by _You have one unheard message_.

“Hi, Peter. I wanted to call and confirm the meeting we agreed on this morning. May will be ready at ten, and your social worker should get in around eleven. Just ring me back, alright? And if you need a ride or something, let me know, I can- Pick you up, or call a taxi. Anyway, yeah. Just call me back.”

_End of message._

The storm inside him has grown to a maelstrom, titanic and deafening. It overpowers everything coming in from the outside world, and all Tony can think is _oh shit oh shit_ , a constant, unrelenting loop in his head. He dials the number back and holds the receiver to his ear, numb, jerking in surprise when the line picks up.

“Peter?”

He can’t respond, too stuck in the hallows of his mind.

A shuffling noise. “Peter? Hey, I don’t know if you can hear me, I can’t hear you-“

“Uh, this isn’t Peter Parker. It’s- Man, this is awkward, it’s Tony Stark.”

Silence.

“I- I’m looking for him, and his apartment is a _mess,_ I saw the message on the answering machine, so-”

“Why the _hell_ is Tony Stark in an orphaned teenager’s apartment?”

Fear; horrible, terrible guilt, numbness in his fingertips that spreads through him like tar. “Orphaned?”

The woman on the other end replies slowly, carefully, like there’s panic in his voice that he can’t hear. “Peter’s last living relative died yesterday. I dropped by earlier this morning to check in on him, and we agreed that tomorrow would be a good time for him to see the body and talk to his social worker. Is he not there?”

“No,” He coughs out, like a piece of food gone down the wrong pipe, tumbling from his lips unexpectedly.

“Okay, um. Have you heard from him at all? Phone calls or anything?”

“If I had his phone number, believe me, I would’ve pinpointed him a long, long time ago.”

She sighs and gathers her thoughts before responding. “I can meet you at his apartment in fifteen minutes, we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

Tony panics for a moment before diverting, mind working double time. “I’ve already picked through this place, there’s not much to see. What about if I meet you at the hospital? We can discuss there?”

If this lady, whoever she is, sees the pile of money in Peter’s room or, even worse, the _Scream_ recreation in the bathroom, he won’t be able to cover up Spider-Man’s true identity for long. Pepper and Natasha knowing about it is one thing, but people he can’t fully trust are another- It’s best to play it safe, until he finds the kid and figures out what’s going on.

“Yeah, sure. You know the way?”

“I’ll figure it out. See you in ten.”

\---

Dr. Andrea B. Owens is a short-ish doctor in her late thirties with explosive blonde curls and soft eyes. Tony can feel the passion she holds for what she does like a bonfire, roaring and undying. The amount she cares is evident in the letters pinned onto a corkboard in the corner, in the crayon drawings on the walls. He takes that as a good sign, despite the terrifying gaze she’s pinned him with for the past five minutes.

“Before you turn me into an organ donor or something, let me explain.”

The gaze narrows to a point instead of a wide-bore laser, but she nods, so Tony continues.

“Peter is my intern. I’ve been working with him for a year or so, and- Well, he’s a punctual kid. More like, ‘fashionably early’ punctual, not ‘arrive on the preset date and time’ punctual, so. When he missed a bunch of lab days, I got worried. Headed over to his apartment, saw it trashed, and well-“

“Now we’re here.”

“Now we’re here,” He confirms.

Owens sighs and pinches her brow. Crows feet are the only wrinkle marring her face, which is an impressive achievement, considering she spends most of her days stopping people from dying, and Tony looks like an orange left in the sun for a week when he can’t find a T6 torx. “I’ve seen people have… Intense reactions to the deaths of their loved ones. I saw a guy drive his car through a Wendy’s after his grandpa died, once. Greif makes people do crazy things, but- Peter.”

She drops the hand from her face and leans across the desk to where Tony’s sitting, arms and legs crossed, mirroring the way his mind is twisted, like a loose strand of DNA. “Peter was having a hard time dealing with May. I had to calm him down from a panic attack a few days ago, I mean- His mental state isn’t good right now, and it’s sure as hell not stable enough for him to be alone.”

He nods in agreement. “I’ll use all the resources I can to track him down. He probably just went to a friend’s house or something, tried to get away from it all. I know I would.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes longer before Tony works up the courage to speak, twisting the skin on his middle finger’s knuckle. “I can’t help but feel like this is my fault, you know? He’s- Just, I thought I knew him. I knew his aunt, I thought- He’d trust me enough to come to me if he needed help.”

Owens shakes her head. “May and I used to work together, right in this hospital. She was an OBGYN nurse. Kind woman, loving as anyone I’ve ever met. She always talked about Peter, whenever she had the chance. And from the time I’ve been able to spend with him, I don’t think it’s an issue of trust.”

“What is it, then? I could’ve helped, whatever her condition was. Why didn’t he _ask?_ ”

A shrug. “That kid carries a heavy burden. A guilt complex, probably. Was killing himself over not being able to help his aunt, and I think- I think asking you for help, with you being, y’know.”

“Tony ‘Motherfucking’ Stark?” He supplies.

“Yeah. That. With you being ‘Tony ‘Motherfucking’ Stark’, he might’ve been intimidated, didn’t want to burden you with something like that.”

The real reason why picks away at him slowly, painfully, like a pick into alpine ice. It always has, since the moment he made the decision. Tony’s familiar with guilt; It’s his one true vice, outside of cheap alcohol. Every great futurist is really just someone afraid of the present; His dad used to say that all the time. Blaming himself was always grounding, like counting sheep at night or taking deep breaths. Guilt is easier to hold onto, easier to anchor on. But now, with Peter in danger, it being _all his fault?_ That’s crushing. The pressure of it makes him want to curl into a ball and sob, but that won’t fix anything; Plus More energizing than guilt is _fear_ , and Tony hates fear. So he channels it into a space in his mind, lets it well up, static and grey, and breathes.

“Something like that.”

Tony stands and pulls out his phone, offering it to the doctor. “Slide your number in there. I’ll call you when I find him, alright?”

Owens complies and hands it back over. “I’ll be waiting. And Stark?”

She gives him another cold, hard glare, hands stuffed into the pockets of her labcoat. “If I find out you were lying to me? Hippocratic oath be _damned_ , I will fuck you up.”

He gulps and offers his best mock salute in return, trying not to let the truth behind his eyes mix into the desperation pooling in his irises. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

Ю

_“Stark.”_

_They’re outside of the courthouse, and Tony is taking slow, short drags off a stress cigarette, tapping his foot on the worn cement. His anxiety is worthless; Toomes is going to prison for a long,_ long _ass time, but he worries, nonetheless._

_May stands next to him as he stares out into the midday traffic. Peter is giving his testimony, decked out fully in the suit, and neither of them could stand it. He offers her the burning stump, and she denies. Tony grinds the embers into ash with his shoe, watching as the last spark goes out._

_“I want to ask something of you. And this isn’t an ultimatum, ok? Don’t think of it like that.”_

_“Shoot,” He says._

_She takes a deep breath and starts. “Peter lost his uncle, my husband, at thirteen. There was about a year where he just wouldn’t talk to me, to anyone. He shut off, shut down, all that. He was grieving. Then he got bitten by that spider at Oscorp, and everything changed._

_“I think he felt he could make a difference, a real, true one, not something he thought was superficial. So he went around saving lives, stopping crime, all that. And one day, you drop by my apartment, fancy suit and black eye included, and whisk him off to Germany, use him to fight a war, then stop talking to him for nearly a year.”_

_Tony looks down at the ash blowing in the wind, pushed into the corners of the alleyway. He empathizes with it far too much._

_“And I- Don’t blame you for that. I don’t know what went down with you and your friends, but it must’ve been bad. But now- Now, Peter goes off to fight a bunch of insane weapons dealers, tracks down and gathers incriminating evidence on them_ by himself _, then when he makes a mistake you don’t just slap his wrist and talk it out, you rip away the clothes you put on his back and toss him away like garbage._

 _“My_ kid _fought a sociopath in a metal flying suit on an_ airplane _for you, Stark. And nearly died in the process, so here’s what I’m going to ask of you.”_

 _May looks over to him. They’re about the same height, but she’s so much scarier, all thin and tanned Italian fury. “Either stay with my kid, encourage him,_ mentor _him, or don’t. I can’t ask for an ultimatum because, one, those are stupid, and two, I don’t know you well enough. If you don’t think you can handle him, that’s fine. I get it. But don’t break my kid’s heart again. He doesn’t deserve that, and you know it.”_

 _The stinging hatred in the back of his mind supplies him with a simple answer:_ Peter doesn’t deserve to have to deal with you.

_Tony turns his head and gives her a curt nod. “I understand.”_

_He leaves her in the wet summer heat, eyes downturned and hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. Blindly, he navigates to the courtroom, flops down onto the bench outside. There’s a rustling, bags being picked up and suit jackets being buttoned up, before the doors open._

_Peter steps out in his spandex and makes for the bathroom. Tony follows, despite the voice in his head telling him not to, finding the kid spewing up a tuna sandwich into the toilet, mask in hand._

_“You alright?” He asks dumbly, fiddling with a loose thread on his dress pants._

_A flush. Peter turns, sits with his back against the porcelain. “Yeah, just. That was rougher than I thought it’d be.”_

_They stand there awkwardly, tension building steadily. “I’m sorry,” Tony blurts, and immediately winces._

_“What for?”_

_The kid turns, all doe-eyed and confused, and Tony suddenly understands a different definition of heartache. “For leaving you there, without your suit. It was my responsibility to keep you safe, and I failed. I’ll do better for you, I promise.”_

_Peter blinks. “Mr. Stark, It’s my fault I sunk that ferry anyway. And even without the suit, I managed fine.”_

_“Still. You’re my responsibility, kiddo. I could’ve,_ should’ve _, done something more. To help you out, I mean. With Toomes, or anything. And I didn’t.”_

_More tension, tight like harpstrings. They both just look at each other, expressions indecipherable,_ _and Tony coughs, clears his throat, pulls his suit jacket down. It feels tighter and stuffier than it should. “I’m gonna- Get out of here.”_

_Tony darts from the bathroom, trying to ignore the sound of confusion the kid makes as the door thumps silently closed behind him. He hates the feeling welling in his chest, in his mind, overwhelming and uncontrollable. Deep, way back in some horrible recess of his mind, he knows it’s best for Peter if- If he keeps his distance. The closer people are to Tony, the rougher it is, and he’s been through enough already._

_But if that’s the truth, he wonders, why does every other fiber of his being feel like it’s wrong?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you best believe we've got Mama Natasha inbound.


End file.
